Exactly When You Can See This Week’s ‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ Eclipse From Every U.S. State

Jamie Carter
Senior Contributor
Science
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky

The month’s marquee astronomical event is a total lunar eclipse—a "Blood Moon"—on May 26, 2021. GETTY

Will you see 2021’s “Blood Moon” total lunar eclipse? That depends on where you are on the planet—and even within North America. That’s because the full “Flower Moon”—also technically 2021’s biggest, brightest and best “supermoon”—will set in North America just as it’s about to go red.


For the east coast and much of the midwest U.S. that’s a huge shame, though it will still be possible to see at least some of the early stages of this five-act total lunar eclipse from everywhere in the U.S.

Here’s precisely what you’ll see from where you are—and exactly when to look at the “Super Flower Blood Moon Eclipse” from everywhere in the U.S.

TL;DR: Totality—when the full Moon turns reddish for 14 minutes 30 seconds—will be visible from 15 U.S. states as well as parts of western Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, with the West Coast getting the best views of the “Blood Moon” at 4:11-4:25 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Hawaii and Alaska will get the best views. But many central U.S. states will also see a partial lunar eclipse as the full Moon becomes a weird-looking “Half-Blood Moon.” The east coast, however, will see little more than the full Moon drop in brightness before it sets.


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3 Reasons Why May 2021's 'Super Flower Blood Moon' Eclipse Will Be A Very Big DealBy Jamie Carter

Why ‘West is best’ for the ‘Blood Moon

Those in Hawaii and on the West Coast will see everything. By that I mean all FIVE phases of the total lunar eclipse will be visible at these times in global Universal Time (UTC), which are:

1. The full Moon entering Earth’s outer shadow and turning a dull grey (penumbral lunar eclipse) from 08:47-09:44 UTC (57 minutes – full Moon drops in brightness).

2. The full Moon getting increasingly red as it enters Earth’s inner shadow (partial lunar eclipse) from 09:44-11:11 UTC (1 hour 27 minutes – full Moon begins to turn reddish).

3. The full Moon in totality—100% red (total lunar eclipse) from 11:11-11:25 UTC (14 minutes 30 seconds – full Moon is reddish).

4. The full Moon gradually losing its redness (partial lunar eclipse) from 11:25-12:52 UTC (1 hour 27 minutes – full Moon begins to turn grey).

5.The full Moon leaving Earth’s outer shadow and turning a dull grey (penumbral lunar eclipse) from 12:52-13:49 UTC (57 minutes – full Moon remains muted in brightness).


As you can see it’s acts 2 and 3 that are most worth observing.

It’s a global event, so all you have to do is convert UTC to you local timezone. You can do that here, but it’s better to enter your location here to get an exact observing schedule for your location because the various stages of the eclipse may happen after the Moon has set in the west.

Take a look at this map, below, and it should now all make sense.

You can see that the Moon sets midway across the country just as totality is upon us. Totality will be visible from 11 U.S. states west of that “moonset line,” including parts of western Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Everyone east will miss out on a red Moon, but some will be able to see the full Moon turning red before it sets.

Below the map are the times for every U.S. state, what you’ll see, and where to look in the sky. Note that most of the U.S. will need a clear view of the southwest horizon to see a “red moon” setting:

 


Total lunar eclipse visibility on May 26, 2021. JAMIE CARTER/MAP DATA FROM XAVIER JUBIER

Here’s a useful interactive Google Map of the total lunar eclipse so you can see how high above the horizon each phase is (kudos and thanks goes to French eclipse-chaser and cartographer Xavier Jubier).
Where to see the ‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ total lunar eclipse on May 26, 2021 from every U.S. state capital

The further west you go the more of a partially eclipsed “Blood Mon” you’ll see. Click on the link for each U.S. state capital to get the exact schedule—the time of “maximum” being the very best view of a “red Moon” from that location.


It’s a global event so the times won’t change for the phases, but how high above the horizon the Moon is will change, so enter your exact location for the full details.


Alabama (AL) - Montgomery (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Alaska (AK) - Juneau (entire eclipse visible)
Arizona (AZ) - Phoenix (entire eclipse visible)
Arkansas (AR) - Little Rock (penumbral and partial phases visible)
California (CA) - Sacramento (entire eclipse visible)
Colorado (CO) - Denver (entire eclipse visible)
Connecticut (CT) - Hartford (penumbral phase only visible)
Delaware (DE) - Dover (penumbral phase only visible)
District of Columbia (DC) - Washington (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Florida (FL) - Tallahassee (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Georgia (GA) - Atlanta (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Hawaii (HI) - Honolulu (entire eclipse visible)
Idaho (ID) - Boise (entire eclipse visible)
Illinois (IL) - Springfield (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Indiana (IN) - Indianapolis (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Iowa (IA) - Des Moines (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Kansas (KS) - Topeka (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Kentucky (KY) - Frankfort (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Louisiana (LA) - Baton Rouge (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Maine (ME) - Augusta (penumbral phase only visible)
Maryland (MD) - Annapolis (penumbral phase only visible)
Massachusetts (MA) - Boston (penumbral phase only visible)
Michigan (MI) - Lansing (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Minnesota (MN) - St. Paul (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Mississippi (MS) - Jackson (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Missouri (MO) - Jefferson City (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Montana (MT) - Helena (entire eclipse visible)
Nebraska (NE) - Lincoln (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Nevada (NV) - Carson City (entire eclipse visible)
New Hampshire (NH) - Concord (penumbral phase only visible)
New Jersey (NJ) - Trenton (penumbral phase only visible)
New Mexico (NM) - Santa Fe (entire eclipse visible)
New York (NY) - Albany (penumbral phase only visible)
North Carolina (NC) - Raleigh (penumbral and partial phases visible)
North Dakota (ND) - Bismarck (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Ohio (OH) - Columbus (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Oklahoma (OK) - Oklahoma City (entire eclipse visible)
Oregon (OR) - Salem (entire eclipse visible)
Pennsylvania (PA) - Harrisburg (penumbral phase only visible)
Rhode Island (RI) - Providence (penumbral phase only visible)
South Carolina (SC) - Columbia (penumbral and partial phases visible)
South Dakota (SD) - Pierre (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Tennessee (TN) - Nashville (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Texas (TX) - Austin (entire eclipse visible)
Utah (UT) - Salt Lake City (entire eclipse visible)
Vermont (VT) - Montpelier (penumbral phase only visible)
Virginia (VA) - Richmond (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Washington (WA) - Olympia (entire eclipse visible)
West Virginia (WV) - Charleston (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Wisconsin (WI) - Madison (penumbral and partial phases visible)
Wyoming (WY) - Cheyenne (entire eclipse visible)



A total lunar eclipse is really five different phases—penumbral partial, total, penumbral and then ... [+] GETTY

Even for the western U.S. it’s going to be quite tricky to see the “Blood Moon,” as this summary shows


Very low in the southwestern sky – Texas: 6:11-6:25 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Low in the southwestern sky – New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Idaho and Utah: 5:11-5:25 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Higher in the southwestern sky – Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington: 4:11-4:25 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26, 2021

If you can choose where to go to get the best view of the “Blood Moon?” Hawaii gets the best view followed by Alaska and coastal California.

Disclaimer: Jamie Carter is Editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

Jamie Carter
I'm an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer writing about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and the author of "A Stargazing Program for Beginners: A Pocket Field Guide" (Springer, 2015), as well as many eclipse-chasing guides.

Tardigrades are almost bulletproof, scientists discover

Mike Wehner BGR

© Provided by BGR tardigrades moon

Tardigrades — those microscopic organisms that have been found to withstand extreme radiation, the vacuum of space, and temperatures that would turn most other organisms into literal popsicles — are a true wonder of nature. They seem to be virtually indestructible, and in a highly-anticipated 2019 mission by Israel, they were sent to the Moon. Unfortunately for the country and scientists working on the mission, the Moon lander crashed and was completely destroyed. The tardigrades, however, well we aren’t quite sure what happened to them, but scientists are eager to find out.

Tardigrades, also called “water bears,” are so ridiculously hardy that researchers think they may have survived the high-speed collision between the lander and the Moon’s surface. To test that theory, a team led by a Ph.D. student from London’s Queen Mary University conceived of an experiment where the microscopic creatures would be shot out of a “science gun,” as it were.

The gun is unlike a conventional firearm in that it uses a two-stage system to propel projectiles at extremely high speeds. The projectiles reach speeds greater than bullets fire from a typical gun, and the extreme impact of the projectiles against a target is a better simulation for the kind of extremes the tardigrades might have endured.

Before being fired from the gun, the tardigrades were subjected to freezing temperatures. This triggered a hibernation state that reduces their metabolism to a tiny fraction of what it would be under normal conditions. Then, the tardigrades were loaded into nylon bullets in groups of 2 to 4. The researchers fired those bullets at sand targets a short distance away and observed whether or not the tiny creatures survived the intense pressure changes of the initial shot as well as impact with the target.

The scientists shot the projectiles at different speeds, gradually increasing the velocity with each subsequent shot. What they found was that tardigrades are indeed capable of enduring a bullet impact, but only up to a point. The tardigrades were capable of enduring shots of up to roughly 900 meters per second. To put that in perspective, a 9mm handgun round can be expected to travel at speeds of around 400 meters per second. Meanwhile, most 5.56x45mm rounds fired from a rifle will travel somewhere between 850 and 900 meters per second.

So, the tardigrades were capable of enduring impacts akin to that of a rifle round, which is pretty impressive. Unfortunately for anyone who likes to imagine the tiny water bears surviving their brush with death on the surface of the Moon, the impact of the lander with the lunar surface would have subjected the creatures to a shock of much greater intensity. The researchers feel comfortable in stating that none of the tardigrades could have survived the impact. Bummer.

Ancient Roman bath complex found on beach in southern Spain

By Zamira Rahim and Vasco Cotovio, CNN 

A well-preserved ancient Roman bath complex has emerged from the sands of a beach in southern Spain

 

.© Universidad de Cádiz - LABAP Facade of one of the rooms of the Roman structure

The researchers from the University of Cádiz (UCA) found well-preserved Roman baths with walls more than 13 feet high at the Caños de Meca beach in Spain's Andalusia region, the university said in a statement.

Only two rooms have been excavated so far, with most of the site remaining untouched. UCA said the site is estimated to spread over 2.5 acres.


The walls of the two excavated rooms had been covered by sand "after their abandonment in Late Antiquity," UCA said.

Some medieval ceramics from the 12th and 13th centuries were also found near the baths.

At a separate UCA excavation on Andalusia's Cape Trafalgar, at least seven Roman salting pools -- used to preserve food -- were found, with depths ranging from 5 feet to 6.5 feet.

UCA said some "remains of Roman preserves" were found in two of the pools.

As well as the Roman artifacts, they also discovered an intact prehistoric tomb at the Cape Trafalgar site.

The university said the burial site was 4,000 years old and contained the remains of several individuals.

"It is wonderful," Patricia del Pozo, Andalusia's culture minister, said, adding that the excavations showed that the region was "an ​​incredibly attractive area for all types of civilizations, which endows us with incredible history."

Last year, authorities inadvertently discovered a collection of ancient Roman containers, called amphorae, while inspecting a seafood store in Alicante, eastern Spain.

The officers brought the finds to the attention of Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, which determined that the containers were likely from the Roman Empire and could date back to the first century.

© Universidad de Cádiz - LABAP An aerial view of the Roman ruins discovered at Cape Trafalgar

.

© Universidad de Cádiz - LABAP The Cape Trafalgar dig uncovered at least seven pools used for preserving food.

Village of the dammed: Submerged Italian community re-emerges after 71 years

Duration: 01:55

The Italian village of Curon has resurfaced from under the water for the first time since 1950. Mike Drolet explains how the community disappeared, then returned, and Canada has its own versions of Curon.

SEE MURDER OF THE DEAD 

1. Murder of the Dead by Amadeo Bordiga 1951

   https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm

   Like Maramaldo, capitalism, oppressor of the living, is the murderer also of the dead: “But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labour, corvée-labour, etc., are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalist mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised …

Halliburton shareholders vote against executive compensation plan

By Liz Hampton and Arunima Kumar 

© Reuters/Brendan McDermid FILE PHOTO: Halliburton's president and CEO Jeff Miller, tours the floor at the NYSE in New York

(Reuters) -Halliburton Co's shareholders voted against the oilfield services provider's proposed executive compensation plan in an advisory motion, the company said on Thursday.

Halliburton Chief Executive Officer Jeff Miller said the company was "disappointed by the shareholder advisory vote" and that it had led its peers in shareholder returns despite challenges stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and a supply and demand imbalance in oil markets.

Halliburton did not provide vote tallies. The company revised its executive compensation program in 2019 and received 91% approval of the plan from shareholders last year.

Shares of Halliburton are up about 18% year-to-date to $22.38 as oilfield activity has slowly returned amid higher prices.

Miller and other executives pledged to cut salaries last year after the pandemic crippled the oil market and set off a wave of layoffs in the industry.

Although Miller cut his base salary by $200,000 between 2019 and 2020, he received some $9.7 million in stock awards, versus $3.6 million the previous year. Overall, his compensation was 293 times the median compensation for Halliburton employees, the company said in an April filing.

Chief Financial Officer Lance Loeffler's base salary jumped from $650,000 to $709,000 between 2019 and 2020, and his earnings were also bolstered by stock awards.

Halliburton in April said the sharp increase in 2020 compensation was due to changes to the plan and reporting.

Companies are not required to comply with advisory votes.

(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru and Liz Hampton in Denver; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Cynthia Osterman)

How a lack of insurance is a growing threat to the oilsands

Kyle Bakx 

CBC

20/5/2021

© Kyle Bakx/CBC Oilsands companies are finding it more difficult to insure their facilities in Northern Alberta, with insurers citing both the financial and climate risk of fossil fuel industries and the oilsands in particular.

The fight to stop the Trans Mountain oil expansion pipeline from Alberta to Canada's West Coast was back before the national regulator recently, with the Crown corporation behind the project seeking to protect the names of the insurance companies backing the controversial development.

Trans Mountain made the proposal after demonstrators in Vancouver blocked the entrances of buildings housing insurance companies to demand they stop insuring the pipeline, resulting in four arrests.

The Canada Energy Regulator ultimately sided with the pipeline builders, allowing them to keep the insurers' names secret from the public.


But opponents could only delight at their impact, with the Crown corporation making it clear in its application how pressure over the years by environmentalists was making it harder and more expensive to find enough insurance, threatening the viability of the project.

The dispute even made international headlines.

Trans Mountain isn't alone as natural resource companies are increasingly struggling to obtain adequate coverage amid rising prices and fewer numbers of insurers willing to work with the fossil fuel industry, especially pipeline and oilsands companies, which could threaten future growth of the sector.

"It's certainly a sign that the pressure on the insurance companies is working," said Elana Sulakshana, with the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental organization based in San Francisco.

Sulakshana spends the majority of her time finding ways to try to stop insurance companies from supporting the fossil fuel industry, because burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.

This week, the International Energy Agency released a report detailing how the global energy industry can bring carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world a chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 C. Besides projects already in development, it said there are "no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway."

Only in the last 12 to 24 months have environmental activists decided to put much more emphasis on the role of banks and insurance companies, said Sulakshana.

"There's absolutely no room for new oilsands or any oil and gas infrastructure to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement," said Sulakshana. "Financial institutions should not be supporting these products or companies."

In its application to the regulator, Trans Mountain said insurers were increasingly reluctant to provide coverage for the pipeline project and at a reasonable price.

The company had already "experienced a significant reduction in available insurance capacity" in 2020 and the demonstrations this year were likely to result in the problem getting worse and making it more of a challenge to "fulfil its significant financial resource obligations" that are required by the regulator.

For their part, insurers have cited financial risk as one of the reasons to pull out of oilsands investing. Climate regulations and societal pressure "could result in significant loss of value ('stranded assets') for the most carbon intensive businesses," wrote AXA in 2017, calling the oilsands "a particularly carbon intensive form of energy."
Fewer options

It's difficult to quantify how much insurance rates have increased for the oilsands industry because there are many factors that go into prices and companies are often changing their coverage, usually choosing to purchase less insurance to avoid higher expenses.

About a decade ago, there were about 50 large insurance companies in North America, Europe and Bermuda that provided coverage to the oilsands, said Joe Seeger, who has more than 25 years of experience advising oilpatch companies on insurance.

Today, there's only about half as many, he said.

When big players likes AXA, Allianz, and Zurich announce they are reducing their exposure to emission-intensive sectors such as the oilsands, amid "an increasing climate crisis," they can pull out hundreds of millions of dollars of insurance coverage.

"It really is a supply and demand situation where we always go to our clients and have the bad news of [explaining] are fewer insurers and we have to try to figure out new ways to do the business," said Seeger.

For instance, the large insurers based in London, U.K., are only offering up a combined limit of $200 million US toward coverage of the oilsands, compared to almost $500 million just 18 months ago, according to a recent report by Willis Towers Watson, an international insurance broker.

The biggest oilpatch players like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Suncor Energy are able to self-insure, but smaller companies don't have the same luxury. Adequate insurance for a large industrial facility is often required by banks and other investors.

"Based on the coverages that you can get, I don't know if you'd see any more of these mega-projects go on in the oilsands anymore. I just don't see the ability to financially backstop some of the mega-projects that put the oilsands on the map," Seeger said.© Kyle Bakx/CBC Some oilsands companies have supported carbon pricing policy for several years. The oilsands are responsible for about 11 per cent of the country's total emissions, according to 2018 data from the federal government, and other oil and natural gas production makes up another 11 per cent.
Strange bedfellows

To fill the void, Canadian companies have increasingly looked to China, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the world to underwrite operations in Northern Alberta, Seeger said.

While activists are seeing results from their efforts to pressure insurers, they also realize the strategy has its limits. Not only can the large corporations self-insure, but the majority of oil production comes from state-owned companies around the globe, who also don't always require traditional insurance coverage.

Restricting insurance is an effective tool to combat climate change, said Sulakshana, with the Rainforest Action Network, but it "is not a silver bullet."

Driving some North American and European oil and gas producers out of business could also benefit some of the state-owned companies operating in other countries without the same level of environmental standards, some energy experts say.

"The climate movement has a lot of work to do to grapple with how we're challenging the build out of oil and gas infrastructure in some of those petro-nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia," she said.

Increasingly, activists are targeting the insurance and finance industry to stop supporting coal and oil companies

             

Duration: 01:26 

 

The technique isn't a "silver bullet" but is showing signs of working, says Elana Sulakshana, with the Rainforest Action Network.

The fastest way to fix a labor shortage: Pay more

Analysis by Christine Romans, CNN Business  

For decades, worker compensation has been stagnant, while corporate profits make up an ever-increasing share of the economy.   

An Amazon.com Inc. delivery driver scans bags of groceries while loading a vehicle outside of a distribution facility on February 2, 2021 in Redondo Beach, California. - Jeff Bezos said February 1, 2021, he would give up his role as chief executive of Amazon later this year as the tech and e-commerce giant reported a surge in profit and revenue in the holiday quarter. The announcement came as Amazon reported a blowout holiday quarter with profits more than doubling to $7.2 billion and revenue jumping 44 percent to $125.6 billion. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

The coronavirus pandemic has made the divide between employee and employer far more apparent. Covid disrupted the labor market in ways we have never seen: health worries, family obligations, hybrid-learning and child care shortages mean millions of workers remain on the sidelines. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a record 8.1 million job openings in March.

As the economy reopens, employers are scrambling to meet the demand from newly vaccinated customers.

To retain and recruit workers in a tightening labor market, a parade of companies in recent weeks vowed to raise their minimum wage.

Under Armour next month will bump its minimum pay from $10 an hour to $15, a pay raise in the US for more than 8,000 employees.

Amazon said last week it is hiring 75,000 workers at an average starting pay of $17 an hour, and offering $1,000 signing bonuses in some locations.

At McDonald's corporate-owned restaurants, some 36,500 employees will get pay raises. The company said average hourly wages should reach $15 by 2024.

Costco, Walmart and Chipotle also raised average pay.

But the prize goes to Bank of America. It has already doubled its minimum wage since 2010 to $20 an hour last year, and vowed to raise starting pay to $25 an hour by the year 2025.

CEO Brian Moynihan told my colleague Poppy Harlow it will cost the company "a few hundred million dollars a year" when it happens in 2025. He called it an "investment" in the "standard of living for our teammates."

The bank can easily afford it. It earned $8.1 billion in the first quarter and gave $5 billion back to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks. That's 5,000 million dollars to shareholders in three months, compared with an extra few hundred million for workers four years from now.

Before you applaud...

Hold off on the good citizenship awards. This is good business.

"The recent wage hikes -- from McDonald's to Bank of America -- were not necessarily because these companies have suddenly gone soft," says Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments. "It's because they need to retain labor and inoculate themselves from criticism from the populist left."

A move to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour is currently stalled in Washington. The Biden administration has raised the minimum for federal contractors, and wants corporations and the rich pay for Biden's infrastructure and care economy agenda.

That's why Bank of America's wage hike is a "smart public relations move," says Valliere. "Major companies also may be worrying about an assault on their huge profits and astonishingly generous compensation packages for their top executives."

And it's just not a good look when deep-pocketed public companies have full-time workers who make so little, they rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Millions of Americans working fulltime earned so little, the taxpayer was subsidizing the wages through the safety net, according to a report from the GAO published late last year.

There's obviously a difference between those deep-pocketed major corporations and small proprietors.

Millions of small business owners run with ultra-thin margins. For them, rising food and labor costs coming out of the pandemic are especially critical. Many employers say they face competition from enhanced jobless benefits. Those benefits are scheduled to run out in September. More than 20 Republican-led states have moved to end those federal benefits early to entice those workers back into the jobs market.

The big companies raising wages "were also on the winning side of the pandemic," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton.

That could exacerbate the divide between the haves and the have-nots as we exit the pandemic.

"Sadly, they are competing away workers from smaller businesses that were barely able to stay afloat during the crisis," Swonk said. "I worry about what that means for dynamism in the economy."

Former Canadian ambassador to Israel worked for Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm

Brigitte Bureau  

CBC RADIO CANADA

© The Canadian Embassy in Israel Then-Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during former prime minister Stephen Harper's trip to Israel in 2014.

Vivian Bercovici, Canada's former ambassador to Israel, worked for the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube after her diplomatic tenure ended, Radio-Canada has learned.

Black Cube is a controversial private sector company composed of ex-members of the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies.

Messages addressed to a potential Black Cube client from Bercovici in 2019, obtained by Radio-Canada/CBC, contain references to her former occupation as an ambassador.

Black Cube made headlines in 2017 when it was discovered that Hollywood film executive Harvey Weinstein had hired it to dig up information on the women accusing him of sexual assault, and on the journalists pursuing the story.

In Canada, Black Cube has been criticized by an Ontario court for attempting to discredit a judge by trying to get him to make antisemitic comments in secretly recorded meetings.

Bercovici was appointed ambassador by then-prime minister Stephen Harper in January 2014. She was removed from her post by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in June, 2016.

In one of the messages Bercovici sent a potential Black Cube client in 2019, she says she can provide a wide range of services, such as undercover surveillance, finding hidden information about third parties' personal lives and tracing bank accounts and assets.

In other messages, she writes that she works for Black Cube, that she would be one of the people personally supervising all operational matters and that Black Cube believes it can help the client achieve their objective. Although she was not ambassador at the time, the messages make it clear she had held that position.

Radio-Canada/CBC has chosen not to reveal the contents of all the messages to protect the identity of the person who shared them.

These messages were provided to Radio-Canada/CBC as Bercovici and some of her supporters — including Sen. Linda Frum, a personal friend — were accusing Radio-Canada/CBC of antisemitism in previous reporting on the former ambassador.

Bercovici, who lives in Israel, did not provide answers to our questions — even at the end of a deadline extended at the request of her lawyer William McDowell of the Toronto law firm Lenczner Slaght.

Radio-Canada/CBC has asked Bercovici, among other things, when she started working for Black Cube and if she's still working for the company.

Through its lawyer, Black Cube denies that Bercovici has ever worked for them.

"Black Cube has never employed Ms. Vivian Bercovici, whether directly, as an employee, contractor or consultant, or indirectly, through any subsidiary or third party," wrote their lawyer, Jonathan Abrams, of the U.K. law firm Gregory Abrams Davidson Solicitors.

"We would stress that Black Cube's operations and methodologies are backed by highly respected expert legal opinions in every jurisdiction in which it operates, ensuring that Black Cube's activities are in full compliance with applicable laws in those jurisdictions," Abrams added.

Black Cube has offices in Tel Aviv, London and Madrid.

Black Cube also threatened to sue Radio-Canada/CBC if it published this story.
Targeting a judge

Black Cube has carried out controversial operations in Canada in the past.

One was an undercover sting operation to discredit a Toronto judge who had ruled against its client, Catalyst Capital Group, a private investment company. Radio-Canada/CBC has no indication that Bercovici participated in this operation.

In 2017, Catalyst hired Tamara Global Holdings, an Israeli investigation and security firm, which in turn retained the services of Black Cube and Psy Group, an Israeli intelligence firm that no longer exists.

Those companies were hired to assist Catalyst in its legal dispute with a rival company.

One of the goals of the vast undercover operation they organized was to attack the reputation of Judge Frank Newbould, who had rendered a decision against Catalyst in a commercial legal dispute.

Using a false identity, a Black Cube agent met with Judge Newbould and tried to get him to make anti-Jewish comments during secretly recorded meetings.

"Basically we're trying to prove that he's a racist, a depraved anti-Semite, and trying to find information that could paint him in as negative a light as possible," wrote a Psy Group agent to a Black Cube agent, according to an Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling that was made public in March 2021.

The recent court decision revealed new details about the activities of these intelligence companies in Canada. But the fact that Tamara Global Holdings acted as an intermediary between Catalyst, Black Cube and Psy Group has been public knowledge since at least 2018.
Black Cube's ethical standards

Tamara Global's principal is Yossi Tanuri, a former commander of an elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, according to his biographical notes.

Tanuri was also director general of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA from 2004 to 2019.

Asked if it was aware of Tanuri's involvement with these intelligence companies while he was its director general, the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA did not respond. Tanuri also did not reply to Radio-Canada's emails.

Radio-Canada also reached out to Sen. Frum, who has been a member of the board of directors of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA since 2017. When Tanuri left the organization in 2019, his going-away party was held at Frum's house.

Frum said she was not aware of Tanuri's involvement with Black Cube while he was director general of the organization. She said she had no reaction to his involvement with Black Cube and Psy Group, as described in the recent court ruling.

Asked if she knew that Bercovici has worked for Black Cube, Frum replied, "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about."

"Black Cube is dangerous because it does not abide by ethical rules," said Avner Barnea, an academic and expert in private-sector intelligence.

Reached in Israel, Barnea said Black Cube "does not even come close" to the ethical standards established by the international association Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, which he serves as an advisory board member.

On its website, Black Cube presents itself as "a select group of veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units that specializes in tailored solutions to complex business and litigation challenges."

Barnea said that some of Black Cube's activities might be permissible for a government intelligence agency — but are unacceptable for a private business.
The mysterious letter

Radio-Canada/CBC's inquiry into Bercovici and Black Cube started with a mysterious letter.

In January 2021, Radio-Canada/CBC reported on a letter signed by Bercovici and addressed to a Toronto businessman and Liberal supporter named Alan Bender.

In that November 2019 letter, Bercovici offers to drop her lawsuit against the Government of Canada as a way of thanking Bender for saving her life.

The letter was sent by an anonymous source, but Radio-Canada was able to confirm it was written by Bercovici.

In 2018, Bercovici launched a lawsuit against the federal government alleging, among other things, that the Trudeau government acted in bad faith when it terminated her diplomatic appointment and that she had not been properly compensated for her pension benefits.

The lawsuit has now been settled and is covered by a non-disclosure agreement.

In a phone interview with Radio-Canada in January, Bender, an international mediator, said he was asked by important political figures — including one from Israel — to intervene to help Bercovici.

Bender said he did save Bercovici's life — along with her professional and personal reputation — but didn't want to give any details. Bercovici declined to comment at the time.

Radio-Canada reached out to Bender again to ask if the alleged threat on Bercovici's life had anything to do with her Black Cube activities. Bender would not comment.

Some of Bercovici's decisions and expenses during her tenure as an ambassador raised eyebrows in the Department of Foreign Affairs — something she herself acknowledged in her lawsuit.

Bercovici had insisted on renting private office space outside of the embassy, a move deemed highly unusual by high ranking officials. Radio-Canada/CBC is not naming these sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

The rental of office space at 22 Rothschild boulevard in Tel Aviv was approved by Foreign Affairs, as Bercovici's lawyer has previously noted.

Bercovici, Sen. Frum and others, including some Jewish organizations, have criticized Radio-Canada/CBC for quoting unnamed sources in its reporting, saying the sources were smearing Bercovici with the antisemitic canard of dual-loyalty.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations is one aspect of antisemitism cited in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, which was adopted by the Government of Canada in 2019.

However, the concerns raised by the officials Radio-Canada spoke to were related to the nature of some of the former ambassador's behaviour and decisions, which they said were highly unusual for a senior diplomat. During those interviews, none of the officials demonstrated any antisemitic sentiment.

Associated Press Draws Backlash After Axing Staffer Over Her Pro-Palestine Tweets

The Associated Press drew intense backlash Thursday night after news broke that a young staffer was fired for her past tweets about Israel and Palestine. The axing took place just days after the AP's Gaza bureau was decimated by Israeli forces.

© TheWrap associated press

Emily Wilder was a news associate at the AP only a few weeks when she was fired. In a statement to TheWrap, the publisher said, "While AP generally refrains from commenting on personnel matters, we can confirm Emily Wilder's comments on Thursday that she was dismissed for violations of AP's social media policy during her time at AP."


Wilder frequently tweeted about the situation in the Middle East. Last Sunday, for instance, she tweeted: "'objectivity' feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly stake a claim. using 'israel' but never 'palestine,' or 'war' but not 'siege and occupation' are political choices — yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased."

Her college participation in Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine was called out by the Stanford College Republicans, a group from her alma mater, the next day. Critics of the AP's decision to terminate her say the organization bowed to conservative pressure.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler mused, "Amazing how quickly a talented young reporter's career can be snuffed out by a Twitter mob that decided to feign outrage over some college tweets. And if @vv1lder somehow violated @AP's social-media rules, the solution is to offer guidance, not termination, to a new reporter."

He, like others, pointed to an internal memo about her firing that was leaked Thursday afternoon. In it, U.S. West news director Peter Pengraman briefly informed AP staffers that Wilder "is no longer with the AP" and the company will try to fill her position quickly.

"Firing journalists over things they wrote as students, without any evidence of bias that's affected their professional work, won't make journalism better, it'll simply make student journalists more afraid to develop their voices and say anything interesting lest they anger a mob," tweeted Yair Rosenberg, a senior writer for the Jewish magazine Tablet.

"I don't know what this accomplishes other than signaling that it's open season for troll campaigns on AP journalists. AP must acknowledge it made a mistake and rehire @vv1lder," said the Los Angeles Times' Matt Pearce.

Every journalist should be outraged about @AP firing @vv1lder over college activism in favor of freedom for Palestinians. The industry is rife with clear double-standards on this," wrote the Times' Adam Elmahrek. "No college kid should have to fear losing a future career because they stood by their values."

Director Farah Nabulsi: “The World Is Seeing What It’s Like to Be Palestinian” (Guest Column)

Farah Nabulsi

Amidst the grief for those killed in Gaza, and the rage at the Israeli bombardment of a blocked territory with strikes that devastate tower blocks and wipe out families, there is an outpouring of support for our rights and our plight the likes of which has never been seen before.

This is a difficult and often overwhelming contrast.

In the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians under Israeli military occupation have been subjected to intense levels of dehumanization and violence. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, meanwhile, are targeted by far-right Jewish Israeli gangs and a brutal police force.

Palestinian artists have not been exempted from these realities. Actor Maisa Abd Elhadi, for example, a star of U.K. Channel 4’s Baghdad Central and Gaza Mon Amour, was shot and wounded by Israeli forces during a demonstration in Haifa against Palestinians being dispossessed of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem.

Turner Prize–nominated artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan platformed fellow artist Inas Halabi on his Instagram account, as she reported on continued police brutality in Haifa, while well-known musician Tamer Nafar has urged international protection for Palestinians under threat in al-Lydd (Lod). (He also turned filmmaker and shared on social media ominous personal phone footage shot from his apartment window while on the phone with Israeli police, reporting what he was witnessing and filming: Israeli settlers armed with semiautomatic weapons being loaded off buses outside his home during what is supposed to be a “curfew” for all. The police hung up on him after telling him it was not his business).

The only art supply store in Gaza has been destroyed by Israeli air strikes while actual artists trapped there post hellish videos of massive explosions of fire and the sound of bombs thundering right outside their windows at night.

Palestinian filmmakers, actors, and artists, already hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, are now impacted by the Israeli government’s assaults on all fronts, just as they are also part of this far-reaching and inspiring mobilization on the ground by Palestinians united in a way we haven’t seen in at least a generation.

For those of us Palestinians who live in the West, following from afar, it is extremely difficult reading and watching these events reported to us in a distorted and often biased form by major media outlets.

While our families and friends send us updates of the latest atrocity on the ground, headlines and news bulletins mislead and confuse; colonialism becomes a “conflict,” ongoing ethnic cleaning, “evictions,” attacks on civilians, a “clash.”

Though nothing new, this media fog, where a “both sides” discourse erases the difference between occupier and occupied, and a military behemoth versus a fragmented civilian population, makes the bold and brave shows of solidarity all the more appreciated.

Demonstrations and marches the world over have warmed the heart, but it has been particularly noteworthy and wonderful to see quite so many artists, creators and Hollywood stars speak up and speak out, using their platform and influence to raise awareness and a call for justice.

Actors such as Susan Sarandon, Viola Davis, Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Natalie Portman, Lena Headey, and Danny Glover have expressed their public support for Palestinians — whether it’s for those Palestinians struggling to keep their homes in Jerusalem or the plight of Gaza under Israeli bombs. International footballers raised the Palestinian flag in solidarity, like Paul Pogba and Amad Diallo did at a recent Manchester United game. Even Geraldo Rivera shocked Fox News TV with his words calling out the United States for being “complicit in an ongoing crime against humanity” by providing Israel weapons to bomb Gaza.

Such statements and their amplification of pro-justice voices are both indicative of, and in turn help expand and deepen, a seismic shift of perceptions about Israel and the Palestinians. Put simply, our demand for freedom and basic rights is being understood with growing clarity amongst the public and politicians.

This shifting ground is down to years — decades — of hard work by Palestinians, and their pro-justice allies, to educate and inform. In the times we live, where a phone turns every Palestinian into a filmmaker, the mainstream media’s failings are being compensated for and positively challenged. Moral compasses are pointing more clearly at the cruel reality.

The world is seeing, more directly and vividly than ever before, what it is like to be Palestinian: to yearn to live freely with dignity and without oppression or discrimination in your own homeland. This is thus a moment of anger but also of hope. We are witnessing a narrative being transformed, and it cannot come a moment too soon.

Farah Nabulsi is a Palestinian British filmmaker whose credits include the recent short The Present, which was nominated for an Oscar in the best live action short category and won a BAFTA for best short film.