CHANGES QUANTUM REALITY

Scientists prepare CERN collider restart in hunt for 'dark matter'

A man works in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Control Centre in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, on Apr 13, 2022.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel is pictured at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, France, on Mar 2, 2017. 

(Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)

A view through a glass of people working in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Control Centre in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, on Apr 13, 2022. 

Head of the Operations Group in the Beam Department Rende Steerenberg gestures during an interview with Reuters in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Control Centre in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, on Apr 13, 2022.

People work in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Control Centre in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, on Apr 13, 2022. 

Photos: REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

21 Apr 2022

PREVESSIN, France: Scientists at Europe's physics research centre will this week fire up the 27 kilometre-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that found the Higgs boson particle, after a shutdown for maintenance and upgrades was prolonged by COVID-19 delays.

Restarting the collider is a complex procedure, and researchers at the CERN centre have champagne on hand if all goes well, ready to join a row of bottles in the control room celebrating landmarks including the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle a decade ago.

"It's not flipping a button," Rende Steerenberg, in charge of control room operations, told Reuters. "This comes with a certain sense of tension, nervousness."

Potential pitfalls include the discovery of an obstruction; the shrinking of materials due to a nearly 300 degree temperature swing; and difficulties with thousands of magnets that help keep billions of particles in a tight beam as they circle the collider tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border.

Steerenberg said the system had to work "like an orchestra".

"In order for the beam to go around all these magnets have to play the right functions and the right things at the right time," he said.

The batch of LHC collisions observed at CERN between 2010-2013 brought proof of the existence of the long-sought Higgs boson particle which, along with its linked energy field, is thought to be vital to the formation of the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

But plenty remains to be discovered.

Physicists hope the resumption of collisions will help in their quest for so-called "dark matter" that lies beyond the visible universe. Dark matter is thought to be five times more prevalent than ordinary matter but does not absorb, reflect or emit light. Searches have so-far come up empty-handed.

"We are going to increase the number of collisions drastically and therefore the probability of new discoveries also," said Steerenberg, who added that the collider was due to operate until another shutdown from 2025-2027.

Source: Reuters/ec

Dingoes aren't just feral dogs, says study

Dingoes might look like regular mutts, but in fact they're genetically in between wolves and dogs, according to a new study published Friday in Science Advances.

© Handout Sandy the desert dingo as a mature female

The species -- revered in Aboriginal culture but the bane of modern ranchers -- has been Australia's top predator since the extinction of Tasmanian tigers last century.

However, "the evolutionary position of the dingo has been debated for a substantial period of time," co-author Bill Ballard of La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne told AFP.

Some hold that the lean, tan-colored canines, brought to the continent 5,000 to 8,500 years ago, are simply another form of domestic dog, though one which is far harder to tame or keep as a pet. Though not normally aggressive, they aren't especially interested in humans.


© Handout Knowing more about dingo evolution can also illuminate the history of the ancient people who brought them across the sea from Southeast Asia, say scientists

The new research -- a global collaboration involving 26 authors from 10 countries -- compared the genome of a desert dingo named Sandy, who was rescued in 2014 along with her siblings -- to those of five domestic dog breeds and the Greenland wolf.

They found the dingo's genome was structurally distinct from the boxer, German shepherd, basenji, Great Dane and Labrador retriever.

But she still shared more similarity with the domestic dogs than with the Greenland wolf. Among the breeds, Sandy was closer to the German shepherd than the rest.

"Sandy the desert dingo is intermediate between the wolf and the domestic dogs," concluded Ballard. To be even more sure, the team is sequencing the genome belonging to an alpine dingo, found in the Australian Alps in the country's east.

- Ancient human movements -

The finding can have several applications.

For one, the dingo genome can be used as an ancient reference book to help identify which genes are responsible for genetic disease in modern dogs, rather than trying to compare between inbred dog breeds.

Knowing more about dingo evolution can also illuminate the history of the ancient people who brought them across the sea from Southeast Asia.

"At some stage they had to cross some water with some traveling peoples," said Ballard. "Whether they're First Nation Australians or whether they're people that interacted with First Nation Australians, we don't know."

The team hopes to get a clearer sense of the timeline and start to answer other questions like whether it was a single migration or multiple, once they sequence the alpine dingo.

The study also set out to test the differences in how dingoes metabolize nutrients compared to domestic breeds, by running a controlled diet study on a number of dingos and German shepherds.

Dingoes, like wolves, have only one copy of a gene that creates pancreatic amylase, a protein that helps dogs live on starchy diets, which humans have thrived on especially in the past 10,000 years.

German shepherds have eight copies of the gene. After receiving the same water and rice-rich food for 10 days, the German shepherds' scat was found to contain three bacteria families that helped them in breaking down starch, confirming the researchers' predictions.

Like the wolf in North America, dingoes are deeply polarizing: they are romanticized by city dwellers and feature prominently in Indigenous songs and stories, but are hated by farmers for allegedly killing livestock.

According to Ballard, however, dingoes evolved to prey on small marsupials and aren't easily able to digest high-fat foods -- thus lambs are more likely being hunted by feral dogs or hybrids.

He hopes to test the prediction, and perhaps exonerate the dingo, in future behavior experiments.

ia/bgs

Twitter bans ‘misleading’ ads about climate change

The announcement came on Earth Day

By Justine Calma@justcalma

Apr 22, 2022, 

Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Twitter levied a new ban today on “misleading” advertisements “that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”

“We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company said in a blog post today.

“MISREPRESENTATIVE ADS SHOULDN’T DETRACT FROM IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS”

Its decisions about what’s legit content in regard to climate change will be guided by “authoritative sources,” it says, including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has published a couple of landmark reports on the crisis over the past few months that break down what needs to be done to adapt to the changes that are already unfolding as well as how to avert even more severe consequences in the future, like intensifying weather disasters and ferocious wildfire seasons.

Twitter also said that it will soon share more details about how it plans to “add reliable, authoritative context” about climate change on its platform. Those conversations have gotten much louder over the past year, according to the company. Talk about “sustainability” on the platform has grown by over 150 percent since 2021, Twitter says. Discussions on “decarbonization,” aka getting rid of greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels, are also up 50 percent. Other environmental conversations are heating up, too. Chatter about reducing waste grew by more than 100 percent over the same time period.

Twitter’s new announcement is also part of a broader social media saga to stop lies about climate change. Other companies have made similar commitments, with varying success.

Google made a commitment in October 2021 to stop allowing ads that feature climate denial or that monetize climate misinformation. Even so, a report published soon after the new policy went into effect found that Google was still placing ads on climate-denying content. Google told The Verge at the time that it reviewed the content and decided to take “appropriate enforcement actions.” Facebook has also come under fire for failing to label climate misinformation despite its policy on flagging such content. Another report about the platform published last November also found a sharp rise in interactions with posts from Facebook pages and groups focused on spreading climate misinformation.

Iraq Exhibits Restored Art Pillaged After 2003 Invasion

April 23, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

Restored art pieces by renowned Iraqi artists are on display at 

Iraq's Ministry of Culture in Baghdad on April 6, 2022.
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BAGHDAD —

Verdant landscapes, stylized portraits of peasant women, curved sculptures -- an exhibition in Baghdad is allowing art aficionados to rediscover the pioneers of contemporary Iraqi art.

Around 100 items are on display in the capital, returned and restored nearly two decades after they were looted.

Many of the works, including pieces by renowned artists Jawad Selim and Fayiq Hassan, disappeared in 2003 when museums and other institutions were pillaged in the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion to topple dictator Saddam Hussein.

Thousands of pieces were stolen, and organized criminal networks often sold them outside Iraq.

Tracked down in Switzerland, the U.S., Qatar and neighboring Jordan, sculptures and paintings dating between the 1940s and 1960s have been on display since late March at the Ministry of Culture, in a vast room that used to serve as a restaurant.

"These works are part of the history of contemporary art in Iraq," ministry official Fakher Mohamed said.

Artistic renaissance

Pictures and sculptures were in 2003 spirited away from the Saddam Arts Centre, one of Baghdad's most prestigious cultural venues at the time.

While he crushed all political dissent, Saddam cultivated the image of a patron of the arts. The invasion and years of violence that followed ended a flourishing arts scene, particularly in Baghdad.

Now, relative stability has led to a fledgling artistic renaissance, including book fairs and concerts, of which the exhibition organized by the ministry is an example.

It helps recall a golden age when Baghdad was considered one of the Arab world's cultural capitals.

Among canvases of realist, surrealist or expressionist inspiration, a picturesque scene in shimmering colors shows a boat sailing in front of several "mudhif," the traditional reed dwellings found in Iraq's southern marshes.

Other paintings, in dark colors, depict terrified residents surrounded by corpses, fleeing a burning village.

Elsewhere, a woman is shown prostrate in a scene of destruction, kneeling in front of an arm protruding from stones.

There is also a wooden sculpture of a gazelle with undulating curves, and the "maternal statue" -- a work by Jawad Selim that represents a woman with a slender neck and raised arms.

The latter, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was rediscovered in a Baghdad district known for its antiques and second-hand goods shops. It was in the possession of a dealer unaware of its true value, according to sculptor Taha Wahib, who bought it for just $200.

'Priceless works'

Looters in some cases had taken pictures out of their frames, sometimes with cutters, to steal them more easily.

"Some pieces were damaged during the events of 2003 -- or they were stored in poor conditions for many years," Mohamed, the culture ministry official, told AFP.

But "they were restored in record time," he said.

Other works are being held back for now, with some waiting to be restored -- but they will be exhibited once more, Mohamed pledged.

He wants to open more exhibition rooms to show the entire collection of recovered items.

"Museums must be open to the public -- these works shouldn't remain imprisoned in warehouses," he said.

The 7,000 items stolen in 2003 included "priceless works,” and about 2,300 have been returned to Iraq, according to exhibition curator Lamiaa al-Jawari.

In 2004, she joined a committee of artists committed to retrieving the many stolen national treasures.

"Some have been recovered through official channels" including the Swiss embassy, she said, but individuals also helped.

Authorities coordinate with Interpol and the last restitutions took place in 2021.

The selection on display will be changed from time to time, "to show visitors all this artistic heritage," Jawari said.

Ali Al-Najar, an 82-year-old artist who has lived in Sweden the past 20 years, has been on holiday in his homeland.

He welcomed the exhibition.

"The pioneers are those who initiated Iraqi art. If we forget them, we lose our foundations" as a society, Najar said.

Gabon counts on visitors to help preserve great apes

by Adrien Marotte

Public observation of Gabon's gorillas is resuming at Gabon's Loanga National Park after

 two years of closure due to Covid.

Around a bend on a narrow trail that runs deep into the forest of Gabon's Loango national park, Kamaya comes into view. The huge silverback gorilla coolly watches visitors arrive, then goes back to his meal.

Perched on a strong branch, the 150-kilo (330-pound) beast greedily pulls more leaves from the tree to his mouth with a slow but powerful movement before lumbering down the trunk. Soon he dozes off calmly.

After two years of a total shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the executive secretary of the National Parks Agency (ANPN) has decided to resume public observations of Gabon's gorillas, hoping the iconic species will serve as a "loss leader" to boost niche tourism.

That Kamaya and his family of about 10 individuals are so used to humans is the outcome of long labours by a team of trackers and scientists who also collect data.

They work to win funds to protect a species threatened with extinction and to attract foreign visitors.

Spending one hour with Kamaya and his group costs 300,000 CFA francs, (450 euros, almost 500 dollars), on top of charges for access to the site and accommodation.

Loango Park, which covers more than 155,000 hectares (380,000 acres) of the densely forested country, offers ample reward for a 4-5 hour road journey from Port-Gentil, the second city, followed by the track and a final stage by boat.

The western gorilla population is estimated at 360,000 individuals across six central 

African countries, about a quarter of them in Gabon.

Though steep, the price is much lower than that paid to see the mountain gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda. It also generates income to manage protected areas that provide a safe place for the animals.

'Illegal activities'

"Tourism is a beneficial conservation strategy for gorillas," says Koro Vogt, manager of the Gorilla Loango project. The mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Uganda were almost extinct before funds from tourism helped to double their numbers in three decades, attaining a population of about 1,000 individuals today.

The western gorillas are far more numerous. Their total population is estimated at 360,000 individuals across six central African countries, about a quarter of them in Gabon. The Loango park is home to nearly 1,500 gorillas, some 280 kilometres (175 miles) south of the capital Libreville.

However, scientific studies by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, which specialises in great apes, indicate that the number of western gorillas is falling by three percent each year due to the destruction of habitat, poaching and disease.

Protected areas such as Loango are theoretically safe for animals, but are home to only 

20 percent of the great apes in Gabon.

These threats are heightened by increased access to remote areas occupied by gorillas, the bush meat trade, corruption and lack of law enforcement.

Protected areas such as Loango, which are theoretically perfectly safe for animals, are home to only about 20 percent of the great apes in Gabon.

"To safeguard the gorillas, our guards patrol the national parks to reduce illegal activities and catch poachers," says Christian Tchemambela, executive secretary of the ANPN.

"This species emblematic of Gabon is also a strong draw for foreign visitors. The development of ecotourism is at the heart of our strategy," he adds. From June 2016 until the beginning of 2020, 845 tourists were able to observe the gorillas on site.

'Gain their trust'

A ray of sunlight pierces the treetops and shines on Mokebo, a 15-year-old female, and the little one she is carrying on her back. Not yet a year old, Etchutchuku stirs, glances at the few people watching him, and hides shyly behind his mother.

It takes years for humans to gain the gorillas' trust.

Close by, a nearly adult male, Waka, approaches the observers out of curiosity. He is unafraid, shows no signs of aggression and settles peacefully a few metres (feet) away.

"This process is very long, it takes years to gain their trust and we are not sure of succeeding," says eco-guide Hermann Landry.

"You have to follow them every day, all year round, relentlessly. Sometimes you lose track of them for several days and that's serious, because they can regain their natural fear of humans," adds Landry, a former poacher who declares that he "fell in love" with gorillas and conservation work.

During an initial habituation phase, gorillas are afraid of humans and run away when approached. In the next phase, they stop fleeing but may react with aggressive charges.

In the final phase, they react calmly and continue their activities without concern about the human presence.

The park authorities are looking to Gabon's great apes to draw in tourists and help 

develop ecotourism.

Today, Gabon is counting on the gorillas to attract new visitors.

There are two family groups in the country accustomed to humans, one in Loango, the other in the Moukalaba Doudou National Park 600 kilometres (370 miles) south of Libreville. However, tourist infrastructure is still almost non-existent.Gabon bans tourists from seeing gorillas over coronavirus fears

© 2022 AFP

China axes 15 coal plants abroad after Xi pledge, but loopholes remain: study

China has vowed to become carbon-neutral by 2060, but its emissions pledges do not 

cover fossil-fuel investments abroad.

More than a dozen Chinese coal power projects overseas were cancelled after a ban last year on funding such plants, but loopholes could allow 18 others to still go ahead, according to a study published Friday.

China is the world's biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving global warming. It has vowed to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060, but these do not include its fossil-fuel investments abroad.

It is also the largest public funder of overseas coal plants, and was planning to build 67 in more than a dozen countries when President Xi Jinping announced a ban on financing "new projects" in September.

Since then, Chinese developers have cancelled 15 overseas coal projects as funding dried up and host countries demanded greener alternatives, a study by the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said.

The cancelled projects would have generated 12.8 gigawatts of electricity—or the total power generation capacity in Singapore, the think tank added.

But a lack of clear rules has allowed Chinese developers to continue to build new coal power projects, it warned.

"The key concern is that China will continue to fund or build new coal projects to power industrial parks under the Belt and Road Initiative," said Isabella Suarez, a researcher at CREA, referring to Xi's $1 trillion global infrastructure push.

"The loophole is that because the industrial parks have been years in the making, additional coal on these projects would not be considered new, even if... tenders are happening after the pledge to ban coal funding."

Deadly impact

China's top economic planner issued vague guidelines in March, telling developers to "proceed cautiously" on coal plants that were in the final stages of planning.

These could potentially stop Chinese funding for 32 planned coal plants and prompt the "reexamination" of 36 others that are under way, according to the CREA report.

However, "about 18 coal projects (in the pipeline) that can generate 19.2 Gigawatts of power have already secured financing and permits... and could still go ahead," Suarez said.

AFP has sought comment on the report from the National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planner.

Most of these projects are in Indonesia, where China is investing billions to mine nickel and other minerals needed to build electric vehicles, according to data from the Global Energy Monitor.

Vietnam and Bangladesh have in recent months requested China to build gas projects instead of the agreed coal projects, according to government notices.

The deadly impact of climate change—from extreme heatwaves to more intense superstorms—is already being felt across the world.

Experts say emissions must be halved within a decade to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) or ideally to 1.5C as stated in the Paris climate accord.China will no longer build overseas coal power plants, but what energy projects will it invest in instead?

© 2022 AFP

Scientists scour 'Mexico's Galapagos' for quake, volcano clues

© DOUWE VAN HINSBERGEN

Could a volcanic eruption off Mexico's coast unleash a tsunami like the one that devastated Tonga? What really causes tectonic plates to shift and trigger earthquakes? Scientists visited a remote archipelago in search of answers.


© DOUWE VAN HINSBERGEN

Scientists visited the remote Revillagigedo archipelago to study if a volcanic eruption off Mexico's coast could unleash a tsunami, as well as the causes of earthquakes

Located in the Pacific Ocean several hundred kilometers from the Mexican coast, the Revillagigedo Islands are known as "Mexico's Galapagos" due to their isolation and biodiversity.

One of the archipelago's volcanos, Barcena, last erupted spectacularly in 1953, and another Evermann, in 1993. Both remain active today.

Located on a mid-ocean ridge, the four islands, which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2016, are uninhabited apart from navy personnel, and access is tightly restricted.

Getting there takes about 24 hours or more by boat and few civilians visit apart from scuba drivers lured by giant manta rays, humpback whales, dolphins and sharks.

Last month, an international team of 10 scientists carried out a week-long mission whose aims included trying to determine if -- or more likely when -- there will be another volcanic eruption.

"What we're trying to find is how explosive these volcanos can be and how dangerous," said the group's leader, Douwe van Hinsbergen, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

- Challenging convention -

The worry is that something similar to the cataclysmic eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai volcano in January could send a tsunami hurtling towards Mexico's Pacific Coast.

"Whenever there are active island volcanos, there are always possibilities of generating tsunamis," said Pablo Davila Harris, a geologist at Mexico's Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of San Luis Potosi.

"What we volcanologists are looking for is when the next eruption is going to happen," using modeling based on previous volcanic activity, he added.

The team also hopes that its analysis of minerals brought up by past eruptions will help to understand the motion of tectonic plates, which cause earthquakes and volcanic activity.

"Plates move over mantle. Is the mantle pushing the plates? Is the mantle doing nothing?" van Hinsbergen said.

According to conventional theory, convection -- the mantle's motion caused by the transfer of heat from the Earth's core to the outer layer -- causes tectonic plates to move and grind against each other.

Van Hinsbergen's hypothesis is that the mantle is in fact "a big lake of rock that is essentially not convecting," which he said would require a complete rethink.

"If that is true, then everything that we see, at least on timescales of tens of millions of years and shorter, is driven by gravity pulling plates down. And that would make the whole system a lot simpler," he said.

The mission received funding from a Dutch program for -- in van Hinsbergen's words -- "ideas that are almost certainly wrong but if they're not they will have big implications."

The samples collected have been taken to Europe for analysis and the results are expected to be known later this year.

dr/mdl

BEZOS WAPO PRO TORY

Opinion:

Canadian Conservatives feel they’ve found the candidate to beat Trudeau

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT


By J.J. McCullough

Global Opinions contributing columnist

WASHINGTON POST
Today 


Pierre Poilievre’s ambition to be Canada’s next Conservative prime minister rests heavily on the assumption that he’s the right person in the right place at the right time.

As far as assumptions about Canadian politics go, it’s not an unreasonable one.

At the moment, much attention has been given to the crowds of thousands showing up to “Pierre for Prime Minister” rallies — a level of political engagement among ordinary Canadians without much precedent. Only Justin Trudeau himself, in his early-2010s incarnation as a fresh-faced critic of then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, feels parallel: a charismatic politician from the out-party enjoying a “rock star” reception from his frustrated base and, with it, the sort of broad trust necessary to begin assembling a formidable campaign for the country’s top job.

Though Poilievre, a former cabinet minister under Harper, still has to win the leadership of the Conservative Party — with members not voting until September — I’ve yet to meet a serious observer of conservative politics in Canada who does not expect him to triumph easily on the first ballot. His two supposedly highest-profile rivals, Jean Charest and Patrick Brown, enjoy virtually no credibility among conservative pundits or intellectuals and stir no excitement among activists. Their imagined paths to power require persuasive skills they simply don’t have.

“In the existing Conservative membership, Pierre is more popular,” admitted Brown recently, before outlining a strategy both brazenly cynical and embarrassingly optimistic, in which he somehow completely swaps out the existing base of the party before voting day.

Poilievre’s emergence as a unifying figure among Conservatives is a predictable response to a string of failed leaders. Since 2015, the Tories have thrice attempted to deny Trudeau power with often highly condescending messages to the electorate, affecting exaggerated concern that he is “just not ready” or is “not as advertised.” Poilievre, a vastly more cutthroat and combative character, would be the first Conservative leader whose candidacy against Trudeau would be fueled by a fairly unapologetic hatred of a man Poilievre has likened to a “corrupt tinpot dictator.”

On one level, this is a much less “safe” strategy than simply treating Trudeau as a source of disappointment or pity. Conservatives have long been instructed not to frighten the country’s nervous suburbanites with rhetoric that’s too angry or sharp-edged, and a Tory leader with a talent for insults running hard against Trudeau seems likely to further coarsen Canada’s already dark and polarized political culture. Yet it’s also true that, by the time Trudeau is scheduled to seek a fourth term in October 2025, he’ll have been in power a full decade. If there’s an appropriate time to go all-in on a message of sheer irritated exhaustion toward a prime minister whose maudlin personality, pious scolding and penchant for hypocrisy have long tested Canadians’ patience (and never impressed more than 40 percent of the electorate), 2025 will surely be it.

Simultaneously, Poilievre’s rise represents a gamble on a more nakedly ideological pitch than conventional wisdom has long deemed wise.

Harper’s three-term tenure was said to demonstrate the good sense of treating politics as a mostly cautious, transactional enterprise, in which modest policy reforms that appealed to the material interests of the middle class, such as new write-offs in the tax code or cutting the national sales tax, could be exchanged for votes. Yet his two immediate successors as Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, found little success with similarly pragmatic campaigns in 2019 and 2021. Poilievre’s campaign is accordingly oriented around grander themes: tearing down arbitrary “gatekeepers” and making Canada “the freest country on earth.” Into these rhetorical buckets have been poured a broad spectrum of promises, including making Canada the world’s “crypto capital,” simplifying zoning laws, recognizing immigrant job certifications and rescinding “all” remaining covid-19 restrictions


Because Poilievre’s philosophical pretenses are so sweeping and unsubtle, they will inevitably invite attempts to find blind spots. Poilievre has always been more of a culture warrior than a libertarian, and doubtless the left will highlight instances in which the freedoms of various groups Conservatives do not traditionally care for go conspicuously unaddressed. But the simplicity of his agenda nevertheless makes its relevance easy to intuitively grasp (including by young voters). Whether it is outrage or optimism, Poilievre makes his fans feel something, and communicates his goals clearly — admittedly basic skills of effective politicians that have nevertheless been conspicuously absent in Canadian politics as of late.

In Canada, it’s often treated as a fact of life that political parties will be unimpressive and unambitious, and that Canadians, when they vote at all, will do so more out of rote partisan loyalty than any conviction they’re actually affecting the course of their country. To Conservatives filling his rallies, casting a ballot for Poilievre is a vote to snap out of this cycle, and thus the most exciting vote they’ve cast in years.


Opinion by

  J.J. McCullough is a Global Opinions contributing columnist.

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OPINIONS ABOUT CANADA

Japan Deems Russia’s Occupation of Disputed Islands ‘Illegal’

Isabel Reynolds, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Japan reinstated a reference to Russia’s “illegal occupation” of disputed islands in its annual diplomatic report for the first time in 19 years, as relations between the neighbors turn increasingly hostile following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The two countries have been locked in a territorial dispute over a group of islands known as the southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan for more than 75 years. The Soviet Union seized the disputed islands in the final days of World War II, expelling thousands of Japanese residents. 

“The Northern Territories are inherent territories of Japan that are currently under illegal occupation by Russia,” the ministry said in the report, which was published Friday on its website. The “inherent territories” wording had also been absent from the so-called blue book since 2011, the ministry said in an email. 

Japan had played down its claims over the past two decades, in an attempt to bolster ties with Russia and seal a peace treaty that would formally end hostilities. But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Japan has closely followed the U.S. line on sanctions, expelling Russian diplomats. Tokyo has also frozen the assets of about 500 individuals as well as organizations and financial institutions including Sberbank. 

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to ban imports of Russian coal, though he hasn’t given any time line for achieving this. Japan also imports oil and gas from Russia. In response to Japan’s sanctions, Russia placed Japan on a list of “unfriendly” countries and ended talks on the islands, which former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said were little more than a “ritual.”

The ministry also expressed strong concern about an increase in joint military activity involving Russia and China in the region surrounding Japan, public broadcaster NHK said.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

SINGAPORE

CPR performed on 14 cats rescued from fire in Fajar Road flat, saving lives of all but one

The efforts paid off as 13 of the cats eventually regained consciousness. 

PHOTOS: SCREENGRABS FROM ITSHAMBALI/TIKTOK
Wallace Woon


SINGAPORE - Firefighters on Thursday (April 21) rescued 14 cats from a burning flat and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on them, saving all but one of the cats.

The incident happened at Block 422 Fajar Road, which is in the Bukit Panjang area.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said firefighters had to force their way into the maisonette unit.

They used three compressed air foam backpacks to extinguish the fire, which involved some items in the flat's service yard.

The rescuers then found the cats, which were unconscious, on both floors of the unit.

As some of the firefighters were also trained as emergency medical technicians, they provided oxygen and conducted CPR on the cats.

The efforts paid off as 13 of the cats eventually regained consciousness.

The SCDF added that about 20 people were evacuated from surrounding units as a precautionary measure and that investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing.

The Straits Times contacted the owner of the flat but she declined to be interviewed, saying she had a lot of things to deal with as a result of the fire.

A video posted on TikTok by user @itshambali shows SCDF firefighters providing the cats with medical attention at a staircase landing at the HDB block.

11.3K1731553

Billions of videos and counting - only on TikTok

@itshambali

Thank You @scdfsg for saving them...... #fire #tiktok #fyp #foruyoupage

Oh no, oh no, oh no, no no - Hip Hop