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Hundreds of protesters opposing the parole of Trois-Rivières engineer Simon Houle gathered outside the Trois-Rivières courthouse on Friday midday.

• Also read: Engineer’s Absolution: Comments that go beyond the scope

• Also read: Absolution after a sexual assault: demonstration against the Poliquin verdict

• Also read: Absolution after sexual assault: Simon Jolin-Barrette is “deeply shocked”

The demonstrators denounced, among other things, the “too lenient” sentence handed down by Judge Matthieu Poliquin and did not hesitate to make their opinion known loud and clear with a bang of “fuck you, sir” and “where is justice”.

This type of comment has not been uncommon since the judgment was published.

“There is clearly an attempt at intimidation,” said Trois-Rivières’ lawyer Michel Lebrun.

“I think the courts act independently and know how to protect themselves from this type of behavior. […] Judge Poliquin said it well in his decision, he is a person to be judged. No two files are identical. You really need to look at the facts of this case,” he said.

For the CALACS of Trois-Rivières, which organized the event together with two other organizations, this judgment will have a negative impact on women victims of sex crimes. “At the protest I met a woman who I have been with for the last few years. She is awaiting her trial. She has been in court for four years. Such a situation directly affects his confidence, esteem and hope,” said intervener Marie-Soleil Desrosiers.

In addition, the victim of Simon Houle also suffered from significant difficulties, both psychological, physical and social.

In a 17-page document we can read a list of the consequences that the victim lives with on a daily basis: sadness, disappointment, anger, frustration, shame, embarrassment, fear of meeting the accused, over-vigilance, loss of confidence, isolation, insomnia, nightmares , guilt and injustice.

“His alcohol and drug use has increased. Dark thoughts led to his seven-day psychiatric hospitalization. She also consulted several psychologists. Intimacy with her spouse was compromised for several months,” the document reads.

She further specifies that “several school absences led to failures and delayed the end of his university career by one session. She was unable to work for five months, resulting in financial hardship for more than two years. Although there were no significant physical injuries, the extent of his psychological injuries indirectly caused him physical pain. The length of the court case caused him disappointment and stress. His family and spouse also experienced misunderstanding and frustration, increasing the victim’s guilt. Over time, his fear of seeing the defendant again or being in a similar situation again diminished.

Despite the impact on the victim, the judge stated that “a parole is a fair and appropriate response here. It is not for the courts to exclude penalties that the legislature itself has not excluded,” the judgment said.

Recall that the judge granted parole in connection with a $6,000 donation to CALACS in Trois-Rivières. The court also ordered the defendant to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act for a period of twenty years.

recall of facts

The judge described the facts as follows: “In April 2019, the defendant and the victim attend the same college. They don’t study in the same field, but they know each other because they belong to the same circle of friends. On the evening of the events, they are in a bar with several friends. There is alcohol consumption. When the facility closed, some of them, including the accused and the victim, continued the evening at a friend’s lodgings. This is where the accused and victims discuss together. In particular, it is about the loss of a parent on their side. This discussion makes the victim emotional. She calls her mother, who offers to pick her up. The victim replies that this is not necessary. The defendant also calms the mother down. A little later, the victim goes into the room of the tenant of the apartment. She lies down next to him in her bed. She is lying on her back, fully clothed and over the blanket. She falls asleep while the accused is not in the room.

The victim is awakened by the light from a camera. She feels fingers moving back and forth inside her vagina. She also feels that her camisole is up and her bra has come off the front. She panics. She moves slightly and the defendant pulls his fingers out of her vagina. She gets up, laces up her bra, pulls down her bodice and goes into the kitchen, where she lies down on the floor. The accused joins her. He takes her in his arms and brings her back to the bedroom on the bed. In the end she falls asleep. When she wakes up, she realizes what happened to her that night.

She calls her husband and tells him that she believes the defendant photographed her while she was sleeping. The victim’s spouse confronts the accused via text message. The suspect quickly joins the victim in the bedroom, throws his cell phone at him and tells him to check. Without looking at the phone, she asks him to leave, which the accused does. A few days later, a friend of the defendant looks into the defendant’s phone to determine that this incident would have happened. Then he finds photos of a woman’s genitals in the camera compartment. He informs the victim, who officially files a report with the police.

Nine photos were secured on the accused’s cell phone. They are shown to the victim, who recognizes his body. The defendant is arrested and remains at large throughout the trial.”

Enlarge / Let’s see, you’ve landed on my “Google Ads” page, and with three houses… that’s $1,400.

Ron Amadeo / Hasbro

The US Department of Justice is preparing for a possible antitrust lawsuit against Google’s advertising business, and a new Wall Street Journal report outlines an “admission” Google is proposing in response to the investigation. Google could split up some of its advertising business and move it to Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

The gist of the WSJ report reads: “As part of a bid, Google has proposed splitting off parts of its business, which auctions and places ads on websites and apps, into a separate company under the Alphabet umbrella, some people said. This unit could potentially be valued at tens of billions of dollars depending on the assets within it.”

The goal of “breaking up” the ads division isn’t necessarily to separate the entire ads division from Google, but to weaken Google’s end-to-end ownership of the ads business. Currently, the company acts as a broker and auctioneer for ads — which the DOJ has a problem with. Google makes tools that cover both the “buy” and “sell” sides of the web advertising world, which naturally pushes advertisers using Google’s buying tools to publishers who sell ad space using Google’s auction system. Most online systems work similarly. Amazon has an interface where Amazon product sellers sell to Amazon product buyers, Uber has a driver and rider system, but the rules are different when you have a monopoly as opposed to just “very big”.

The solution proposed here is for the “sell” side to move from Google Ads to Alphabet, while the “buy” side stays with Google. The idea is presumably that this move would open the door for Google to talk to ad systems other than Google’s, but it’s not clear if Google/Alphabet would be given a mandate to open up.

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Is there a difference between “Google” and “Alphabet”?

In response to the report, a Google spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal: “We have worked constructively with regulators to address their concerns. As we have said, we have no plans to sell or exit this business.” The spokesperson added, “Rigid competition in ad technology has made online ads more relevant, lowered fees and expanded options for publishers and advertisers. “

In the absence of a mandate to open up the ads business, it is not clear what actual changes would result from moving part of Google’s ads business from Google to Google’s parent company. Perhaps casual observers would assume that an Alphabet spinoff would sound like some kind of change, but most seasoned Google observers, including your author, would have trouble pointing out any real-world difference between “Google” and “Alphabet.” In this situation, the ad manager would stop reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and instead report to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Google and Alphabet also share the same CFO and stock symbol, and no Google or Alphabet company would be a self-sustaining business without Google’s pile of ad revenue to throw around. Alphabet company executives earn the coveted title of CEO, but still face the financial demands of Alphabet and the Alphabet/Google CEO.

Setting up an Alphabet spinoff as some sort of split certainly wouldn’t be consistent with how Alphabet has operated in the past. Independent Alphabet companies often work together as a single entity. We see it often with deepmind technology in Google-branded products, Google Fiber’s continued use of the Google brand, and Alphabet’s venture capital firm CapitalG saying bluntly, “As part of Alphabet, we have have special access to Google’s insights and expertise.” Google would have a lot of work to do to explain what the alphabet separation means beyond the trivia in an org chart.

There’s a two-headed monster piloting the Canadians’ great ship with Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes. The duplication phenomenon carries over to Hope, where there are two gurus in Martin Lapointe and Nick Bobrov.

• Also read: Rounds 2 to 7: The CH adds nine players, including a Quebecer

• Also read: First choice of hope run: Stupor at Bell Center

• Also read: The son of Kent Hughes who was drafted by Kings

Since the firings of Marc Bergevin and Trevor Timmins, the rebuilding is evident not only on the ice but also in the upper echelons of the organization.

Lapointe, director of amateur scouting and director of player personnel, and Bobrov, co-director of amateur scouting, took stock of the two days of drafting in Montreal in a small room at the Bell Center.

“When you come out of a draft, you’re always happy,” Bobrov said. But we will hope that in five years we will be. »

“We’re happy, very happy,” added Lapointe. We have accomplished things that were not always easy. We see a lot of matches, recruiters work a lot. We made the best decisions for CH. We had several options and sometimes had to make quick decisions. »

Bobrov recycled a good old cliché from Timmins, who said he was happy with his design but recalled he would have a better idea of ​​this vintage going forward.

Play right

In the first round, the Habs drew twice in Slovakia’s courtyard with Juraj Slafkovsky first in class and Filip Mesar in 26th. For that second day, Lapointe and Bobrov added nine more hopefuls.

With two more picks in the second round, the Canadian bet on a center in Owen Beck and a small mobile defender in Lane Hutson. According to several recruiters, Beck and Hutson had the potential to know their fate in the first round. But they will have slipped to the delight of the Montreal hockey men.

Bobrov tried to find a common ingredient for the team’s 11 picks. It was very difficult to quantify that aspect and play it right.

“It was my first draft with the Canadian, but I have enough experience in this business,” said the Russian, who also speaks English and French. We looked for players who play right. You win the Stanley Cup by playing right. »

“We wanted to find players who recognize what it means to play properly. You’re always looking for the skate, the game sense and the talent. But let’s not forget that Montreal is a different market. You have to be resilient, very resilient. It was a barometer. You remain even more attentive. You need strong young people to survive in Montreal. And you have to play right to win in the NHL. »

A healthy debate

Hughes deliberately didn’t hide his play for his first pick with Slafkovsky.

“We were still deliberating on Wednesday morning,” said Bobrov. It wasn’t an easy decision. There were good players for the summit. The debate continued. Ultimately, what Juraj could do made the difference. At his age, that’s something special. Repechage isn’t about knowing who’s ready to play now or tomorrow, it’s about finding the best player in years to come. We believe that Juraj is that person. »

The US economy continues to defy mounting recession fears fueled by record high inflation and rising gasoline prices, and added better-than-expected 372,000 jobs in June, while the unemployment rate remained stable at 3.6 percent.

After releasing Friday’s strong jobs report, however, Fox News seemed surprised by the growth before finally calling the plentiful number of job opportunities “America’s jobs crisis.”

For example, just ahead of Friday morning’s monthly payrolls release, the network primed its viewers to expect more bad news for President Joe Biden.

“The White House is preparing for what is expected to be a disappointing job report in just over two hours,” host Carley Shimkus told Fox & Friends’ morning flagship show. “The data is expected to show the weakest job growth since April 2021. But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is trying to change the narrative. She insists the Biden economy is the strongest in our nation’s history but admits gas prices are spiraling out of control, though she blames Vladimir Putin.”

Two hours later, after Fox News host Julie Banderas told the station’s listeners that the latest jobs report had exceeded expectations, Trump-promoting Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo was brought in to provide an analysis of the numbers . And she says the report shows America is dealing with the “tightest job market” in recent history.

“We’ve been talking about this concern from employers for a number of months, the fact that this is the tightest job market they’ve ever seen, which is driving wages up,” she told anchor Bill Hemmer on America’s Newsroom. “Three hundred and seventy-two thousand jobs much better than expected. So many people are wondering how it is possible that even in a potential recession that we are in right now, we can create 372,000 jobs.”

Bartiromo continued to stoke concerns that both inflation and gas prices will continue to rise, although she admitted that “commodities have come off their peaks,” adding that we are “in an economy that is slowing despite job growth.”

Hemmer, meanwhile, noted that there are currently around 11 million job openings and that “if you want to work in America, you can”. During these remarks, the program aired a graphic that blared: “America’s job crisis’ while comparing the number of jobs available to the number of unemployed, which is estimated at 5.9 million.

Bartiromo continued to express doubts that the job market will sustain this level of growth, concluding that “we’ll see if this is the last strong report we see before signs of a recession”. Hemmer, praising Bartiromo’s “great analysis,” wondered aloud if “we dip or drop or go the other way.”

In the hour that followed on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus, another Fox Business presenter also threw cold water on the jobs numbers, suggesting they point to elevated inflation and a faltering economy on the brink of recession.

“What’s happening now is that Americans are actually diving into their savings because of inflation,” explained David Asman. “So they’re running out of savings. What to do when you are at home and have no more savings? you go back to work A lot of people who were sitting on the fence are now looking at those 11 million jobs and picking the really good ones.”

Asman added that there are some forecasters who are predicting negative economic growth in the second quarter, noting that the United States may already be “in recession” and therefore “many of those 11 million job openings will dry up. ”

Not everyone at Fox, however, tried to turn Friday’s jobs numbers into negative.

“This doesn’t look like an economy in recession to me,” host Stuart Varney said on Fox Business Network’s Varney and Co.

Other economists also agreed that despite inflation concerns and the slowdown in economic activity in the first quarter of the year, recession concerns may have been premature and overdone.

“The jobs report strongly suggests the economy was not in recession for the first half of 2022,” former Obama economic adviser Jason Furman and research economist Wilson Powell III wrote on Friday. The pair added that the strength of the job market also suggests that inflation may be easing.

“The sharp rise of 372,000 nonfarm payrolls in June seems to mock claims that the economy is heading into, let alone into, a recession,” Capital Economics economist Andrew Hunter told CNBC.

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Elon Musk is ending his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, according to a filing by the billionaire filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Musk’s attorneys sent a letter to Twitter saying he would “terminate their merger agreement,” the filing says. In the letter, Musk argues he has the right to go out of business because Twitter didn’t give him enough information about the company’s business.

Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of “omitting or denying” information that would help Musk and his team determine the true number of bots or spam accounts on the social media platform.

“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has refused them for seemingly unjustified reasons, and sometimes it has claimed to do so while providing Mr. Musk with incomplete or unusable information,” the letter said.

Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is in jeopardy

Twitter CEO Bret Taylor tweeted Friday that the company would take legal action against Musk.

“Twitter’s board of directors is committed to completing the transaction at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” he wrote. “We are confident that we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Legal experts have said Musk cannot walk away from the deal. Its April agreement to buy the company included a commitment to go ahead with the acquisition unless there’s a major change in the deal, and legal experts say nothing happened to reach that threshold. Musk has previously threatened to nix the deal if Twitter doesn’t do it Give it more data to do its own analysis of how many spam bots it has, while Twitter has stated that it cannot reveal any personal information about its users like their names, email and IP addresses that it used to create its own bot numbers.

Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read the letter Musk’s lawyers filed to end the $44 billion Twitter deal

In the letter, Musk accused Twitter of a material breach of terms of the agreement, making “false and misleading” representations and also citing the likelihood of a “material adverse impact,” a significant change that would hurt the company’s value.

“In short, Twitter has not provided any information requested by Mr. Musk for nearly two months, despite his repeated, detailed explanations aimed at simplifying Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information contained in Mr. Musk’s original.” Inquiries were requested,” the letter said.

In the letter, Musk also cited the company’s finances as a possible reason to exit the deal, citing the company’s “declining business prospects and financial prospects” as a separate reason for ending the deal.

Musk argued in the letter to the company that Twitter broke its agreement not to change its business significantly after the deal was signed, firing two senior executives in May and making layoffs on its hiring team in July. Musk said he did not waive the right to conduct due diligence when signing the deal and expected Twitter to provide more information.

Legal experts have said that when he signed the deal, he agreed to buy the company as is.

Musk rocked the social media world in April by agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He assembled a large group of co-investors and used his personal wealth to obtain the debt needed to close the deal. But shortly after his acquisition announcement, a global sell-off in tech stocks eroded Musk’s own fortune, while his $54-per-share purchase price looked like a serious overvaluation of Twitter.

Elon Musk says harassing Twitter workers will drive people off the service

Musk skeptics said he only made up the argument about bots to find a reason to get out of what he now saw as bad business. Musk himself was aware of Twitter’s spam problem and cited it as one of the reasons he wanted to buy the company in the first place.

Wall Street has been skeptical that Musk will complete the deal for months. Twitter’s stock price is around $37 today, down nearly 30 percent from the $52 it was trading at on the day it announced its acquisition.

The filing comes after the Washington Post reported Thursday that the deal was in serious jeopardy because one of the co-investors hadn’t heard from Musk’s team for weeks, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Elon Musk, notorious Twitter troll, is now trolling Twitter himself

With elections approaching, Quebec’s various political parties have announced a number of candidates in recent days.

• Also read: Six new candidates for the Quebec Conservative Party

• Also read: The CAQ relies on a lawyer to trump the Liberals in Maurice-Richard

• Also read: PQ: the mayor of Sainte-Marie-Salomé as a possible successor to Véronique Hivon

The Coalition avenir Québec has already announced 111 candidates. More than half of them are women.

With 100 candidates, Québec is close behind solidaire. There are also more candidates than candidates.

59 candidates were invested in the Conservatives, including 24 women. Party leader Eric Duhaime hopes to be represented in all 125 constituencies.

“We are very confident, there are still three months until the elections. Things are going well,” he said.

The Liberals have only 48 official candidates, while the PQ have 44.

Further nominations will be confirmed in the coming weeks.

July 8 (R) – Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla (TSLA.O) and the richest person in the world, said on Friday he was canceling his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter (TWTR.N ) because the social media company failed to provide information about fake accounts.

Shares of Twitter fell 7% in extended trading. Musk offered $54.20 per share in April.

Twitter chairman Bret Taylor said on the microblogging platform that the board plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement.

“The Twitter board is committed to completing the transaction at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk…” he wrote.

In a filing, Musk’s attorneys said Twitter failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information about fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company’s business development.

“Twitter is in material breach of several terms of this Agreement and appears to have made false and misleading representations on which Mr. Musk relied in entering into the Merger Agreement,” the filing reads.

The announcement is another twist in a won’t-want saga, after the world’s richest person inked a $44 billion deal for Twitter in April, but then shelved the acquisition until the Social -Media company proved that spam bots account for less than 5% of all users.

The terms of the deal stipulate that Musk will have to pay a $1 billion termination fee if he doesn’t complete the transaction.

Musk had threatened to halt the deal unless the company showed proof that spam and bot accounts accounted for less than 5% of users seeing ads on the social media service.

The decision will likely lead to a lengthy legal battle between the billionaire and the 16-year-old San Francisco-based company.

Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis; Additional reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Edited by Sriraj Kalluvila, Anna Driver and Lisa Shumaker

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An impaired motorist has been caught in the bag after trying to be overly cautious in Sherbrooke, Estrie.

Around 2 a.m. Friday morning, a vehicle caught the attention of police patrolling the Quatre Seasons galleries area.

“Cops noticed that the driver made the mandatory stops perfectly, even though he didn’t have any at intersections,” the Sherbrooke Police Department said.

When the police intercepted the driver, they quickly realized that he was drunk. The breathalyzer showed that more than two and a half times the legal limit was reached.

The driver, a 28-year-old man, was arrested and released on promises to appear. His driver’s license was suspended for 90 days and his vehicle impounded for 30 days.