Washington state kicks off 'Joints for Jabs' to promote COVID-19 vaccinations



Photo by: Ted S. Warren/AP
In this April 12, 2018, photo, a worker at the Hollingsworth Cannabis Company packages pre-rolled marijuana joints near Shelton, Wash. America's marijuana supporters have a lot to celebrate on this 420 holiday: Thirty states have legalized some form of medical marijuana, according to a national advocacy group. Nine of those states and Washington, D.C., also have broad legalization where adults 21 and older can use pot for any reason. Michigan could become the 10th state with its ballot initiative this year. Yet cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and it still has many opponents. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)


By: ABC News
Posted  Jun 08, 2021

Adults can claim a complimentary joint of marijuana in Washington state this week when they receive a COVID-19 vaccine shot.

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board announced Monday that the promotion, called "Joints for Jabs," was effective immediately and would run through July 12. During the afforded time period, state-licensed cannabis retailers are permitted to give one free pre-rolled joint to customers who are 21 or older when they receive their first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at an active, on-site vaccination clinic. Customers can only claim the complimentary joint from the retail location during the same visit as receiving the jab, according to the board.

The board said it has "received multiple requests from cannabis retail licensees to engage in promotions to support state vaccination efforts." The board recently allowed for a beer, wine or cocktail to be provided at no cost for those 21 or older who are vaccinated by June 30.

More than 44% of the Evergreen State's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the latest data from the Washington State Department of Health. Meanwhile, over 42% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington is not the only U.S. state to get creative in incentivizing people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. In Arizona, a cannabis dispensary is handing out free pre-rolled joints and gummy edibles in exchange for getting vaccinated. On April 20, a day widely considered the unofficial pot holiday, cannabis reform activist group D.C. Marijuana Justice (DCMJ) gave away more than 8 pounds of locally-grown cannabis rolled up into over 4,200 joints at 30 vaccination sites across Washington, D.C. Then New Jersey partnered with 13 local breweries to offer free beer to residents who got their first vaccine dose in May.

Meanwhile, several states have launched COVID-19 vaccine lotteries in which vaccinated residents are eligible to win cash prizes.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 33 million people across the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 600,000 have died from the disease, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

Australian cops, FBI created backdoored chat app, told crims it was secure – then snooped on 9,000 users' plots

Hundreds of arrests already in Oz, details of European and US ops to be revealed soon

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor

Tue 8 Jun 2021 

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has revealed it was able to decrypt messages sent on a supposedly secure messaging app that was seeded into the criminal underworld and promoted as providing snoop-proof comms.

The app was in fact secretly built by the FBI, and designed to allow law enforcement to tune into conversations between about 9,000 users scattered around Earth.

Results in Australia alone have included over 500 warrants executed, 200-plus arrests, the seizure of AU$45m and 3.7 tonnes of drugs, and the prevention of a credible threat to murder a family of five. Over 4,000 AFP officers were involved in raids overnight, Australian time. Europol and the FBI will detail their use of the app in the coming hours.

The existence of the app — part of Operation Ironside, which quietly began three years ago — was revealed at a press conference in Australia today, where AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw said that, during informal meetings over beers, members of the AFP and the FBI cooked up the idea of creating a backdoored app. The idea built on previous such efforts, such as the Phantom Secure platform.

The app, called AN0M, was seeded into the organised crime community. The software would only run on smartphones specially modified so that they could not make calls nor send emails. These handsets were sold on the black market between criminals as secure messaging tools. The app would only communicate with other AN0M-equipped phones, and required payment of a monthly fee.

“We were able to see every handset that was handed out and attribute it to individuals,” Kershaw said.

“Criminals needed to know a criminal to get a device,” reads the AFP’s announcement of the operation. “The devices organically circulated and grew in popularity among criminals, who were confident of the legitimacy of the app because high-profile organised crime figures vouched for its integrity.”

But the software had a backdoor. Commissioner Kershaw said the organisation he leads “provided a technical capability to decrypt the messages,” and that as a result his force, the FBI, and Europol were able to observe communications among criminals in plain text.

“All they talk about is drugs and violence,” Kershaw said. “There was no attempt to hide behind any kind of codified information.” Intercepts included comments about planned murders and information about where and when speedboats would appear to shift contraband.

Kershaw said the surveillance enabled by the app is legal under the terms of Australia’s Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018. Law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions also had legal cover for their use of the software.

However, some of those authorities were set to expire. That, and an operational decision to end the operation due to the opportunity to act on intelligence gathered using AN0M, led to today’s disclosures.

AN0M gave us insights we never had before

“The use of encrypted apps represents significant challenges,” Kershaw said. “AN0M gave us insights we never had before.”

The commissioner acknowledged that criminals will now adjust their behaviour as a result of this news, but suggested the AFP is working to develop similar capabilities. “This was a small platform. We know there are bigger ones. We will ensure we have the technology to disrupt criminals."

FBI International Operations Division legal attaché for Australia Anthony Russo offered similar comments, saying: “Criminals should be on notice that law enforcement are resolute to continue to evolve our capabilities.”

Kershaw somewhat smugly suggested that organised crime will take a while to bounce back from this operation, as intercepts of AN0M conversations suggest that arrests made before the app was revealed have sparked internecine warfare and revenge plots.

By the way, it turns out someone was able to figure out the FBI's ruse in March this year, though they thought the software had been backdoored by its makers and not the Feds. A blog post describing the workings of the code was later deleted. ®
FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

From hidden master keys to pineapples stuffed with Bolivian marching powder — this story has it all

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

Tue 8 Jun 2021 // 22:58 UTC
3

The FBI has revealed how it managed to hoodwink the criminal underworld with its secretly backdoored AN0M encrypted chat app, leading to hundreds of arrests, the seizure of 32 tons of drugs, 250 firearms, 55 luxury cars, more than $148M, and even cocaine-filled pineapples.

About 12,000 smartphones with AN0M installed were sold into organized crime rings: the devices were touted as pure encrypted messaging tools — no GPS, email or web browsing, and certainly no voice calls, cameras, and microphones. They were "designed by criminals, for criminals exclusively," one defendant told investigators, Randy Grossman, Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of California, told a press conference on Tuesday.

However, AN0M was forged in a joint operation by Australian and US federal law enforcement, and was deliberately and surreptitiously engineered so that agents could peer into the encrypted conversations and read crooks' messages. After Australia's police broke the news that the messaging app had recorded everything from drug deals to murder plots — leading to hundreds of arrests — now the FBI has spilled its side of the story, revealing a complex sting dubbed Operation Trojan Shield.


The Dept of Justice's Randy Grossman walks through journalists through Operation Trojan Shield at a press conference on Tuesday

"For the first time the FBI developed and operated its own hardened encrypted device company, called AN0M," Grossman said.

"Criminal organizations and the individual defendants we have charged purchased and distributed AN0M devices in an effort to secretly plan and execute their crimes. But the devices were actually operated by the FBI."
Playing the long game

According to court documents [PDF] this all came about after the shutdown of Phantom Secure, a Canadian biz selling Blackberry phones customized for encrypted chat to the criminal community. CEO Vincent Ramos pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with drug traffickers and was sentenced to nine years behind bars and had $80M in assets seized.

The closure of Phantom Secure put the staff working there on the FBI's radar. The bureau's San Diego office recruited a developer at the company as a confidential human source (CHS), court documents state. This source had previously been sentenced to six years in the clink for importing illegal drugs, and agreed to cooperate with the Feds to reduce any future punishment potentially coming their way.

Crucially, not only had this programmer worked on the Phantom Secure's encrypted messaging software, but they were also doing work on rival encrypted comms service Sky Global — which also sold modified handsets with secure messaging features — as well as developing their own secure customized phone called AN0M.

"The CHS … had invested a substantial amount of money into the development of a new hardened encrypted device," the indictment by FBI Special Agent Nicholas Cheviron reads.

"The CHS offered this next generation device, named 'AN0M,' to the FBI to use in ongoing and new investigations. The CHS also agreed to offer to distribute AN0M devices to some of the CHS’s existing network of distributors of encrypted communications devices."

And so, in October 2018, the three-year sting operation began.

The CHS — who was paid $120,000 plus $59,000 in living and travel expenses by the authorities — worked with the FBI and the Australian Federal Police to hide a master decryption key into the AN0M app. Messages sent by the software's users were quietly copied and sent off to servers controlled by law enforcement, who were able to use the key to decrypt the texts. Technically speaking, each message is effectively BCC'd to a so-called iBot server located outside the United States that strips away the AN0M-level encryption, and re-encrypts the text for law enforcement. This text is then sent to another server, where the contents can be decrypted and viewed by investigators.

The first three distributors for AN0M were based Down Under. As the Australian authorities were ahead of the FBI in getting a legal framework in place to snoop on these conversations, the Oz cops were first in examining the chatter — albeit just conversations involving users either in Australia or with a nexus to it. Presumably, the AN0M app was set up to send the messages to a server in Australia's jurisdiction.

In this beta test, 50 handsets were passed out Down Under, and this phase of the operation was successful; two of the country's biggest criminal gangs were successfully penetrated and the message copying system worked perfectly. Aussie police reviewing the texts said they found 100 per cent were related to crime. Everyone who used the app was assigned a unique ID, and these handles were known to the police.
Let's go global

In the next phase, the CHS expanded the distribution network beyond Australia, and the FBI found itself in a position to collect the data. After negotiations with an unnamed third country, a message-relaying iBot server was set up in that nation to collect the BCC'd conversations, and on October 21, 2019, it began beaming copies of crooks' chats from AN0M handhelds to an FBI-owned system every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The third country's officials had secured a court order for the surveillance, and the FBI used a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, also known as an MLAT, to obtain the decrypted material.

Sales of AN0M grew steadily, and got a boost when French and Dutch police took down the EncroChat encrypted service in 2020. When a similar swoop shuttered Sky Global in 2021, demand skyrocketed. After the latter take-down, AN0M sales tripled to more than 9000 handsets, each costing $1700 with a six-month subscription to the AN0M encrypted messaging network, Grossman said.

The data haul from the application was immense: more than 27 million messages from 100 countries, and between 300 criminal gangs. This included more than 400,000 photos, typically of drugs or guns and, crucially, shipment plans.


A photo shared via the app. It's tuna surprise. The surprise being there's no tuna. It's coke. Source: DoJ. Click to enlarge

Belgian police, tipped off by the AN0M data, in 2020 captured 613 kilos of cocaine hidden in tuna cans. These were traced to an Ecuadorian supplier, who was caught with another 1523 kilos of coke in a container that would have shipped to Antwerp.


Would make for one hell of a Hawaiian pizza — cocaine-stuffed pineapples. Source: DoJ. Click to enlarge

After intercepting chat about cocaine shipments, on May 12 this year Spanish police seized 1595 kilos of cocaine hidden in hollowed out pineapples. The delivery, from a supplier in Costa Rica, had an estimated street value of $70M.

Police around the world have made 800 arrests from AN0M-gathered intelligence, including cuffing six US law enforcement officers. Of all of those detained, they primarily face charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, gun violations, and violent crime.

Grossman also announced Uncle Sam had indicted 17 suspects on RICO charges relating to the use and marketing of the AN0M handsets. Most of these people are said to be distributors, though the prosecutor said three were administrators who helped run the service. Eight of those RICO suspects have already been collared and detained.

"Operation Trojan Shield has shattered any confidence the criminals may have in the use of hardened encrypted devices," Grossman concluded. ®

There Are At Least 36 Intelligent Alien Civilizations In Our Galaxy, Say Scientists

In Photos: NASA’s Juno Sends Back Epic Images Of Ganymede, The Biggest Moon In Our Solar System

Jamie Carter
Senior Contributor

FORBES
Science
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky



This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS

NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter this week got to within 645 miles/1,000 kilometers of Ganymede, the Solar System’s largest moon.

The spacecraft’s JunoCam imaging system had just 25 minutes to take photographs, just long enough for five exposures, before it then got close to Jupiter for the 33rd time.


Bigger than Mercury and only slightly smaller than Mars, images are now coming back from Juno of Ganymede’s pock-marked, gorgeously grooved and patterned surface.


This image of the dark side of Ganymede was obtained by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit navigation ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS

The Juno science team will now scour the images, comparing them to those from previous missions, looking for changes in surface features that might have occurred in the 20 years since Ganymede was last photographed.

“Things usually happen pretty quick in the world of flybys ... every second counts,” said Juno Mission Manager Matt Johnson of JPL. On Monday, Juno raced past Ganymede at 12 miles/19 kilometers per second and on Tuesday it skimmed the cloud tops of Jupiter at 36 miles/58 kilometers per second.

Larger than both Mercury and Pluto and only a third smaller than Mars, Ganymede has a diameter of 3,273 miles/5,268 kilometers. It’s the largest moon and the ninth-largest object in the Solar System.

The biggest of Jupiter’s 79 moons, Ganymede is one of the four Galilean satellites, the other being Europa, Callisto and Io. These icy Jovian moons were first discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610.

Could Ganymede support life? It does have a thin oxygen atmosphere, but it’s not breathable. However, single-cell microbial life could exist in its subterranean ocean.

About 10 times deeper than Earth’s oceans and thought to contain more water than is found on Earth, Ganymede’s ocean is reckoned to be 60 miles/100 kilometers thick and buried under an icy crust about 95 miles/150 kilometers thick.

“Ganymede’s ice shell has some light and dark regions, suggesting that some areas may be pure ice while other areas contain dirty ice,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “MWR will provide the first in-depth investigation of how the composition and structure of the ice varies with depth, leading to a better understanding of how the ice shell forms and the ongoing processes that resurface the ice over time.”

Ganymede is also the only moon in the Solar System with a magnetic field—a bubble-shaped region of charged particles. Scientists have spotted aurorae—as ribbons of glowing, hot electrified gas—around its poles.


It’s the movement of the aurorae—which rock back and forth as Ganymede’s magnetic field interacts with nearby Jupiter’s—that enabled scientists to determine that a large amount of saltwater exists beneath Ganymede’s crust.


To present the best information in a single view of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, a global image mosaic ... [+] USGS ASTROGEOLOGY SCIENCE CENTER/WHEATON/NASA/JPL-CALTECH

“As Juno passes behind Ganymede, radio signals will pass through Ganymede’s ionosphere, causing small changes in the frequency that should be picked up by two antennas at the Deep Space Network’s Canberra complex in Australia,” said Dustin Buccino, a signal analysis engineer for the Juno mission at JPL. “If we can measure this change, we might be able to understand the connection between Ganymede’s ionosphere, its intrinsic magnetic field, and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”


The shallow, scalloped depression in the center of this picture from NASA's Galileo spacecraft is a ... [+] UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Previously photographed by NASA’s Pioneer 10, Voyager, Galileo and the passing New Horizons spacecraft, Juno’s images reveal a two types of terrain on Ganymede—highly cratered, darker regions and lighter terrain that’s grooved and patterned.

Along with the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) and Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instruments, Juno’s Microwave Radiometer’s (MWR) peered into Ganymede’s water-ice crust, obtaining data on its composition and temperature.


The north pole of Ganymede can be seen in center of this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Juno already had a brief look at Ganymede, returning the first-ever images of its north pole after a flyby on December 26, 2019. However, this week’s flyby is by far its closest examination of the giant moon.

Having just completed its core five-year mission surveying the giant planet, Juno’s 34 perijove—close flyby—of Jupiter sees it in a new, shorter orbit of the giant planet. Its new trajectory has been carefully planned to make sure that Juno gets close to two other moons of Jupiter during its remaining 42 orbits through 2025.


The Galilean satellites are the four largest moons of Jupiter—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. GETTY

The furthest solar-powered spacecraft from Earth, Juno will get to within 200 miles/320 kilometers of Europa on September 29, 2022 and then flyby the volcanic moon of Io twice, getting to within 900 miles/1,500 km of it on both December 30, 2023 and on February 3, 2024.

It’s possible that there will be a further mission extension after that if the spacecraft and its battery remain healthy, though ultimately it will perform a “death dive” into Jupiter to prevent it accidentally crashing into—and polluting—one of Jupiter’s moons., all of which are on NASA’s to-do list in its search for traces of life.


Jupiter as captured by Juno on July 28, 2020. NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN M. GILL

“Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible,” said Bolton. “By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century, both complementing future missions with our unique sensors and helping prepare for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system—NASA’s Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.”

Part of NASA’s New Frontiers program of medium-sized planetary science spacecraft, Juno’s extended mission means it’s now moving from a mission focused on studying the giant planet’s gravity and magnetic fields to a full system-explorer.

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.

London assault that killed four Muslim family members a 'terrorist attack': Trudeau


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a statement in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, regarding the recent tragedy in London, Ontario. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Arvin Joaquin, The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, June 8, 2021 5:49PM EDT

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the attack in London, Ont., that killed four members of a Muslim family and left one child in hospital was an act of terrorism.

After observing a moment of silence for the victims, Trudeau spoke in the House of Commons and called the assault “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.”

“Their lives were taken in a brutal, cowardly and brazen act of violence,” Trudeau said. “This killing was no accident. This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred in the heart of one of our communities.”

Police said a man intentionally drove a truck into the family out for a walk on Sunday evening, and that he targeted them because of their faith.

Nathaniel Veltman, 20, faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

Trudeau said he's horrified by the attack and that his government stands in solidarity with the victims' loved ones during this extremely difficult time.

“This is unfortunately not an isolated event,” Trudeau said. “So many other people across the country who faced insults, threats and violence. They were all targeted because of their Muslim faith. This is happening here in Canada and it has to stop.”

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said he grieves with Muslim community members in London and across the country because this is a pain they have known before.

The latest statistics show that in 2017, the year of the Quebec City mosque shooting when a gunman killed six people, the incidents of police-reported hate crimes against Muslims in Canada rose to 349 cases - a 151-per cent increase from the 139 cases recorded in 2016.

However, Statistics Canada says about two-thirds of hate crimes across the country go unreported.

“Some people have said this is not our Canada, and I think about what that means when people say this is not our Canada,” said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. “The reality is our Canada is a place of racism, of violence, of genocide of Indigenous people … Muslims are not safe in this country.”

Singh said many people live in fear because of the way they look. He said most of the hatred stems from prejudice based on identity and faith.

“To Muslim Canadians, I'm so sorry that you have to live like this,” he said. “That you have to live in fear.”

Singh said Canada must acknowledge that the urgent threat to public safety comes from extreme right-wing ideology, white supremacy and hate groups that radicalize people, adding there must be resources to address these dangers.

Trudeau said the government will continue to fund initiatives like the Security Infrastructure Program to protect schools and places of worship for communities at risk. He added the Liberals will also continue to fight hate online and off-line, which will include more action to dismantle hate groups.

“We will continue doing everything we can to keep communities safe.”

Trudeau is scheduled to be at a vigil outside the London Muslim Mosque this evening. The prime minister also offered opposition leaders transport via Challenger to London, Ont.

An adviser to Green party Leader Annamie Paul said she'll also attend the vigil and will go to London via an electric car.

Trudeau's spokeswoman Ann-Clara Vaillancourt said O'Toole and Blanchet have accepted the offer of transportation.

Singh's office said he will travel separately to attend the vigil.

“I will be joining my Muslim friends and family in London today,” Singh wrote in a tweet. “To grieve with them. To pray with them. To be with them. Because that's what we do for the people we love.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2021.

Crowds begin to gather ahead of London vigil for family run down in hate-motivated attack


A vigil is being held for the Muslim family police say were targeted in a hate-motivated attack that killed 4. Watch LIVE here. CP24 LIVE | CP24.com

Community devastated by London attack: friend

Chris Fox, Web Content Writer, CP24
Published Tuesday, June 8, 2021 5:17AM EDT

Crowds are beginning to gather outside a London mosque ahead of a vigil to remember members of a Muslim family who police say were intentionally struck down by a vehicle in a hate-motivated attack over the weekend.

The family was out for an evening walk on Sunday when they were struck by a pickup truck being driven by a 20-year-old man.

Four members of the family ranging in age from 15 to 74 were all killed as a result.

The fifth member of the family, a nine-year-old boy, was seriously injured but is expected to survive.

The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman, allegedly sped away from the scene following the carnage but was arrested at a nearby mall a short time later. He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in the attack.

“This is nothing short of a terrorist attack on innocent people based on their faith and their religion and there is no place for that in Ontario,” Premier Doug Ford told a pool reporter at Queen’s Park on Tuesday morning. “We are a community that sticks together and we will be united behind the Muslim community.”



Vigil set for tonight

Sunday’s attack and the subsequent revelation that it was motivated by hate has sent shockwaves through the London community and has prompted some calls for terror-related charges to be filed.

Tonight's vigil, set for 7 p.m., will be held at the London Muslim Mosque where the family were well known fixtures.

In advance of the parking lot vigil, the Ford government has issued a one-time exemption that will lift all pandemic gathering limits so long as attendees from different households remain two metres apart.

Speaking with CP24 earlier on Tuesday, London Mayor Ed Holder said that the vigil will be about “London wrapping its collective arms around our Muslim community” as they begin the grieving process.

“The Muslim community has been very much a fabric of our community. They are phenomenal contributors to London's economic and cultural well being. They've always been there for us as community and now it's our turn to be there for them,” he said. “So tonight we'll have a vigil at the London Muslim mosque and this will be London wrapping its collective arms around our little community and saying to them ‘we're in this together.’”

Holder said that Sunday’s attack was an “unthinkable” tragedy that has caused almost “indescribable pain and suffering.”

He said that he appreciates the fear and anxiety that many members of the city’s Muslim community are feeling in the wake of Sunday’s attack and wants them to know that the wider community is feeling their pain.

“We are all Londoners,” he said.




Family remembered for kind nature

Police have not released the names of the victims but relatives have identified them as Salman Afzaal, 46, his 44-year-old wife Madiha Salman, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Salman and Afzaal's 74-year-old mother.

According to an online fundraiser page, Afzaal was a physiotherapist who was known for his “gentle and welcoming smile” while his wife “was a brilliant scholar and a caring mother and friend” who was obtaining her PhD in civil engineering at Western University.

The post said that the couple’s 15-year-old daughter was “a loving friend to many” who was just wrapping up her Grade 9 year while her grandmother “was a pillar of their family that cherished their daily walks.”

“This family struggled very hard and established themselves. They went to school, their kids were very bright and they were there always there with smiles for their neighbours, for everyone. Even when someone was being difficult, they were always very gentle with them,” family friend Saboor Khan told CP24 on Tuesday. “Just the ease and comfort people would feel around them, that friendship, it is gone and it will be missed forever.”

Trudeau, Ford to attend vigil

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend tonight’s vigil, as will Ford.

Conservative Party and NDP leaders Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh will also be in attendance.

Addressing the tragedy at the House of Commons earlier on Tuesday, Trudeau called it a “terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities.”

"What happened on Sunday in London – this act of terrorism and of Islamophobia – is sickening. It is heartbreaking. It’s hard to find words that are enough," he said during a subsequent news conference "What can be said when yet another family has had their loved ones ripped away? When a child is in hospital? When a community is in mourning? So all I can say is this: To everyone who is grieving, who is angry, who is afraid – your neighbours stand with you. Your community stands with you. We will not let hate divide us"

Few details have emerged about the suspect and his motivations at this point, though CTV News did obtain a photo of him on Tuesday afternoon.

Gray Ridge Egg Farms also released a statement acknowledging that the suspect was a part-time employee at its Strathroy plant and extending their “heartfelt sympathy to the family and the Muslim community."

RELATED STORIES

'Horrific': Police say 5 family members run down in London were targeted because they were Muslims

London attack a result of lost opportunity to combat Islamophobia in 2017: expert

Vehicle attack on Muslim family 'terrorist' event, says council of Canadian Muslims

 

Nutritional supplement proves 92% effective in boosting brain function

Individuals with communication disorders report improvement with focus, speech, and motor skills, after using a patented nutritional supplement

CHERAB FOUNDATION

Research News

 

An international subject pool was studied to confirm the effectiveness of a whole food complete vitamin and meal replacement product, IQed. The article, co-authored by Lisa Geng; Francine Hamel, EdD, SLP-CCC; Doreen Lewis, Ph.D., appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, Alternative Therapies (Altern Ther Health Med 2021 Mar;27(2):11-20

The findings indicate that the carefully developed nutritional supplement, IQed Smart Nutrition, can help bolster key functions for people with a wide range of prevalent diagnoses including Autism, Apraxia, and ADHD, and other obscure, but equally challenging, diagnoses encompassing speech and motor processing disorders.  

Deficits in speech and communication were the highest reported area of difficulty for this population, prior to taking the supplement, afflicting 83.8% of respondents. After supplementation, expressive speech improved for 85.7% of the participants with the increased vocalizations (sounds, words) factor showing the highest observed improvement (88.1%) among all speech and communication factors combined.

In all other categories, more than 67% of the survey respondents reported improvements in all measured areas: speech (77.6%), oral motor skills (63.2%), receptive ability (69.6%), focus (65.1%), motor planning (77.6%), mood (62.3%), social skills (59.3%), and physical/ behavioral health (47.3%).

"As a mom of special needs children that runs a nonprofit, I have found that specific essential nutrients are key for the acceleration of progress," said Co-author Lisa Geng, founder, and president of the Cherab Foundation. 

The main aim of this study funded by the nonprofit Cherab Foundation, and its subsequent article, is to guide future research into the dietary interventions and potential management of neurological conditions using natural food products, vitamin and mineral supplements, and Ayurvedic and botanical ingredients, with a focus on improving the quality of daily living and specific developmental milestones for children and adults with disabilities. 

###

Reference: Results of a Consumer Survey on the Effectiveness of a Nutritional Blend Reported on Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms, Apraxia, and Other Conditions Involving Motor and Speech Delays (Geng, Hamill, Lewis, 2021) Alternative Therapies In Health And Medicine 11-20 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32088673/

The Cherab Foundation is a registered 501(c)3 with a focus on Communication Impairments. Cherab's main areas of focus are Awareness, Education and much needed Research.

 

Getting they/them pronouns right

Carolina study shows announcing pronouns improves how pronouns are understood

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

Research News

 

A growing number of people use they/them pronouns to signal their gender identity, but for many people, use of "they" to refer to a single individual takes some getting used to.

Results of a recent University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study showed the social trend of announcing preferred pronouns, which is often seen in email signatures, Twitter bios and Zoom settings, improves how pronouns are understood.

"Announcing one's pronouns matters, and explicitly saying that someone uses they/them pronouns increases the chance that others will successfully interpret the pronoun in this way in the future," said Jennifer Arnold, a UNC-Chapel Hill professor of psychology and neuroscience who led the study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

There is a psychology of language and Arnold studies the mental steps that underlie the way we process language.

Singular "they" has been around for centuries. But its frequency and range of uses is expanding to those who identify as non-binary, that is, those who do not exclusively identify as male or female. Using the pronouns that a person goes by is considered a sign of respect.

Still sometimes people can use the wrong pronoun without realizing it or meaning any harm.

For the recent study Arnold worked with undergraduate students Heather Mayo and Lisa Dong to test the impact of explicitly discussing pronouns. For example, saying "Alex uses they/them pronouns."

During experiments, 184 participants from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia read short stories such as "Alex went running with Liz. They fell down." Answers to "Who fell down?" indicated whether the participants interpreted they as Alex or Alex and Liz.

Singular responses were found more often when Alex was either the only person in the story or when Alex was mentioned first. When Alex was listed as second, the rate of assigning singular interpretations was very low, occurring about 20 percent of the time. It was especially hard to get without instruction about preferred pronouns.

The singular interpretation was stronger - in some experiments doubling the chance of getting pronouns right -- when participants heard explicit instructions that Alex uses they/them pronouns. However, participants in all experiments had the opportunity to learn this through observation and illustrations.

"We found that people adopted the singular interpretation more often when they had been explicitly told a person uses they/them pronouns in comparison with people who just figured it out from the context of a conversation," Arnold said.

###

The National Science Foundation and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in the UNC-Chapel Hill Colleges of Arts and Sciences provided funding for the study.

Analysis: Remember me? With fast recovery, labour shortage haunts Eastern Europe

By Krisztina Than and Alan Charlish 

© Reuters/BERNADETT SZABO FILE PHOTO: An employee works at the Wellis hot tub factory, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Dabas

BUDAPEST/WARSAW (Reuters) - Central Europe's economies are recovering more quickly than expected from the coronavirus pandemic and industrial output is rising, but a chronic shortage of workers that pre-dates the crisis could be a bottleneck to future growth.

The labour squeeze caused by years of emigration to Western Europe and an economic boom across the region is already pushing up wages and inflation, prompting the Hungarian and Czech central banks to flag possible interest rate hikes.

As investment and European Union funds flow in, companies across the manufacturing, information technology and construction sectors are jostling to attract employees.

Eurostat methodology shows three of the European Union's five lowest jobless rates in April, at 3.4% in the Czech Republic, 4.3% in Hungary and an EU-low 3.1% in Poland.

In the same month, inflation rates in those countries were three of the EU's four highest, led by an 5.2% annual rate in Hungary and 5.1% in Poland.

"Temporary demand-supply frictions due to the rapid restart of the domestic economy, (and) renewed tightening of labour market capacities expected in certain sectors combined with dynamic wage growth have increased inflation risks," the National Bank of Hungary said after its May rate meeting.

The bank flagged a possible hike in its 0.6% base rate on June 22 to tame inflation, which would make it the first EU country to begin a tightening cycle.

The Czech economy does not need further support from loose monetary policy, central bank governor Jiri Rusnok said on May 28, suggesting a rate hike might be on cards at its next policy meeting on June 23.

"Labour shortages and the very hot labour market despite the pandemic is already reflected in inflation, and in Poland it can be seen in the prices of services. They are growing around 7% year-on-year and the pandemic does not slow it down much," said Andrzej Kaminski, an economist at Bank Millennium in Warsaw.

"Those labour shortages relate mainly to industry, manufacturing especially."

Graphic: Central Europe unemployment rates stay low -

 https://graphics.reuters.com/EASTEUROPE-ECONOMY/LABOUR/dgkvlnjxrvb/chart.png

LABOUR SQUEEZE

As vaccination drives boost recovery - Hungary has vaccinated 54% of its population - output and consumption have jumped, while labour markets have tightened beginning last year, companies and recruiters said.

German Continental Automotive Hungary, which employed about 8,200 people at end-2020 over seven production sites, two research centres and a tyre warehouse in Hungary, said recovery had started in the third quarter and reported "a healthy customer order situation" at most locations.

Robert Keszte, Head of Focus Country, Hungary, said that for engineers, software/IT experts and technicians in general there was a visible gap between supply and demand, with regional imbalances in the availability of skilled workers.

"I believe the more difficult times are yet ahead of us. With the reopening and recovery of the economy the hiring mood of the companies is also exploding ... I expect a much more difficult situation for the second half of 2021 versus 2020."

"We based our growth plans for increasing efficiency and automation level both in blue collar as well as in white collar positions," he added.

Gabor Toldi, managing director of recruitment consulting firm DTC Solution, said the labour shortage was severe in manufacturing and for white-collar jobs, with companies in eastern Hungary importing thousands of workers from Ukraine.

"A skilled worker can earn up to a gross monthly 500,000 forints ($1,753.09) now but this is still not comparable to wages of 1 million forints in Germany," he said, adding the German economy was still siphoning off workers.

Tomas Ervin Dombrovsky, a labour market analyst at Czech recruitment group LMC, which runs website jobs.cz, said manufacturing sector demand for workers had returned to 2019 levels by last autumn.

Czech job vacancies, according to the labour office, have climbed since November and are near a pre-pandemic record.

Graphic: Inflation in central Europe gaining speed - https://graphics.reuters.com/EASTEUROPE-ECONOMY/LABOUR/rlgpddxlqpo/chart.png

WAGES RISING

Companies under pressure to find workers are raising wages further, after years of double-digit pay growth before COVID-19.

Hungarian gross wages jumped by an annual 9.2% in March, while in the Czech Republic nominal gross wages grew by 3.2% in the first quarter. Corporate sector wages in Poland rose by an annual 9.9% in April.

"We try to adjust salaries to the labour market. We are short of employees and it is very difficult for us to find them," said Ryszard Florek, chief executive of Polish window manufacturer Fakro, adding that the company hoped to boost staffing with up to 100 students over the summer holidays.

"Previously, there were many employees on the market who came from tourism and gastronomy ... however, at the moment it is opening up there (as well)."

Florek said employers would inevitably have to pay more and the question was whether wage costs could be passed through into prices or workers replaced with machines.

"Companies that still have ... large possibilities for automation will certainly do it," he said.

($1 = 285.21 forints)

(Reporting by Krisztina Than in Budapest, Alan Charlish in Warsaw and Jason Hovet in Prague; Additional reporting by Paweł Florkiewicz in Warsaw; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Pembina Pipeline to buy 50% stake in Canada's proposed Cedar LNG

(Reuters) - Pembina Pipeline Corp said on Tuesday it would buy a 50% stake in Canada's proposed Cedar LNG Project to develop the floating liquefied natural gas facility in British Columbia in partnership with indigenous group, The Haisla Nation.

Pembina expects to invest about $90 million into Cedar LNG over the next 24 months, including costs to acquire its interest in the project as well as development costs prior to the final investment decision (FID).

The company, which will acquire the equity interests in Cedar LNG from PTE Cedar LP and Delfin Midstream Inc, will operate the project going forward. Haisla will own the remaining 50% stake.

Cedar LNG, which will have LNG liquefaction capacity of about three million tonnes per annum, lies within the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation and aims to provide liquefied natural gas to Asia-Pacific markets.

The estimated gross project cost of Cedar LNG is $2.4 billion, and the FID is expected in 2023.

The investment comes as investors have been pushing for clean energy alternatives to combat climate change. Demand for super-cooled LNG has surged in recent years as large, energy-consuming nations including China and India wean themselves off dirtier coal.

Demand is expected to keep hitting fresh highs, but three North American projects have stopped development in the past few months, as customers remain hesitant to sign long-term purchase agreements needed for financing.

(Reporting by Rithika Krishna in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)

Ancient 'Megalake': The Largest Lake Ever Held 10 Times The Water of All Lakes Today

Some 10 million years ago, the Paratethys Sea megalake – the largest lake in Earth's history – covered an area greater than the size of today's Mediterranean Sea. On a modern map, it would stretch from the Alps above Italy to Kazakhstan in central Asia.

© Utrecht University

Until now, little has been known about the ebb and flow of the Paratethys Sea during its lifetime, but a new study identifies four cataclysmic, climate-driven cycles that shrank the lake and most likely killed off a significant number of the species living within it.

The aquatic life in the Paratethys Sea was unique, covering everything from mollusks and crustaceans to small whales and dolphins that evolved to suit their restricted environment. As water levels dropped and salt levels rose, however, very few of these creatures would have survived, the researchers say.

"It must have been a post-apocalyptic prehistoric world, an aquatic version of the wastelands from Mad Max," says geologist Wout Krijgsman from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.




Location map of the ancient Paratethys megalake. (Utrecht University)

Krijgsman and his colleagues studied fossil records, sedimentary deposits, and the geology of the area around the Black Sea (at the center of where the Paratethys Sea used to be) to identify four major dips in the water level over several million years, while also modeling and simulating water levels across the region.

The most severe dip was the last one recorded, between 7.65 million and 7.9 million years ago, previously named the Great Khersonian Drying. During this episode, Paratethys Sea water levels plummeted by as much as 250 meters (820 feet), separating the megalake into mini lakes that at times would likely have been toxic to most aquatic life.

According to the scientists' calculations, the megalake could have lost up to 70 percent of its surface area and up to a third of its volume during these dry periods.

At its peak in terms of capacity, it would've covered an area of some 2.8 million square kilometers (over a million square miles), holding more than 10 times the amount of water that's found in lakes on the planet today.

Temperature and precipitation shifts across Eurasia were also affecting changes on land, with open environments replacing forest environments, and types of woodland changing. How these evolutions fed into and affected each other is yet to be fully figured out.

"The partial megalake desiccations match with climate, food-web, and landscape changes throughout Eurasia, although the exact triggers and mechanisms remain to be resolved," write the researchers in their published paper.

Created from tectonic shifts and the rise of central European mountains, the Paratethys Sea would have survived for around 5 million years in total, the geological record shows, before alterations in the landscape meant it drained away into the Mediterranean.


Above: Cliffs overlooking the Black Sea at Cape Kaliakra, Bulgaria are among the few remains of the ancient megalake.

Another recent study shows how dropping water levels around the Paratethys Sea turned shorelines into grasslands, providing fertile ground for the evolution of land creatures too. In fact, the diversity of the African savannah is likely to be down to migration caused by the major dry periods of this era.

Of course, climate-driven changes in landscapes and wildlife remain a very pertinent topic today, millions of years after the Paratethys Sea dried up – every study like this is a reminder of the very real threat that we face today, and as studies into the past continue, they can tell us more about our future.

"The wider impacts and implications of these hydrological crises, in particular beyond the Paratethys area, are still poorly understood," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.