Exclusive-Baby handed to U.S. soldiers in chaos of Afghanistan airlift still missing

Mica Rosenberg
Fri, November 5, 2021

NEW YORK (Reuters) -It was a split second decision. Mirza Ali Ahmadi and his wife Suraya found themselves and their five children on Aug. 19 in a chaotic crowd outside the gates of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan when a U.S. soldier, from over the tall fence, asked if they needed help.

Fearing their two-month old baby Sohail would get crushed in the melee, they handed him to the soldier, thinking they would soon get to the entrance, which was only about 16 feet (5 meters) away.

But at that moment, Mirza Ali said, the Taliban - which had swiftly taken over the country as U.S. troops withdrew - began pushing back hundreds of hopeful evacuees. It took the rest of the family more than a half hour to get to the other side of the airport fence.

Once they were inside, Sohail was nowhere to be found.

Mirza Ali, who said he worked as a security guard at the U.S embassy for 10 years, began desperately asking every official he encountered about his baby's whereabouts. He said a military commander told him the airport was too dangerous for a baby and that he might have been taken to a special area for children. But when they got there it was empty.

"He walked with me all around the airport to search everywhere," Mirza Ali said in an interview through a translator. He said he never got the commander's name, as he didn't speak English and was relying on Afghan colleagues from the embassy to help communicate. Three days went by.

"I spoke to maybe more than 20 people," he said. "Every officer - military or civilian - I came across I was asking about my baby."

He said one of the civilian officials he spoke to told him Sohail might have been evacuated by himself. "They said 'we don't have resources to keep the baby here.'"

Mirza Ali, 35, Suraya, 32, and their other children, 17, 9, 6 and 3 years old, were put on an evacuation flight to Qatar and then to Germany and eventually landed in the United States. The family is now at Fort Bliss in Texas with other Afghan refugees waiting to be resettled somewhere in the United States. They have no relatives here.

Mirza Ali said he saw other families handing their babies over the Kabul airport fence to soldiers at the same time. One video clip https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/the-only-way-out-scenes-from-the-kabul-a-idUSRTXFVLJR of a small baby in a diaper being hoisted by her arm over razor wire went viral on social media. She was later reunited with her parents.

Ever since his baby went missing dates are a blur, Mirza Ali said. Every person he comes across - aid workers, U.S. officials - he tells them about Sohail. "Everyone promises they will do their best, but they are just promises," he said.

An Afghan refugee support group created a "Missing Baby" sign with Sohail's picture on it and are circulating it among their networks in the hopes that someone will recognize him.

A U.S. government official familiar with the situation said the case had been flagged for all the agencies involved, including the U.S. bases and overseas locations. The child was last seen being handed to a U.S. soldier during the chaos at the Kabul airport but "unfortunately no one can find the child," the official said.

A Department of Defense spokesperson and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing resettlement efforts, referred queries on the matter to the State Department, since the separation took place overseas.

A State Department spokesperson said the government is working with international partners and the international community "to explore every avenue to locate the child, which includes an international amber alert that was issued through the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children."

Suraya, who also spoke through a translator, said she cries most of the time and that her other children are distraught.

"All I am doing is thinking about my child," Suraya said. "Everyone that is calling me, my mother, my father, my sister, they all comfort me and say 'don't worry, God is kind, your son will be found.'"

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Jonathan Landay in Washington;Editing by Mary Milliken and Rosalba O'Brien)

RIGHT ON SISTER

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed James Carville, saying 'wokeness' is 'a term almost exclusively used by older people these days' AND FOX NEWS


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed James Carville, saying 'wokeness' is 'a term almost exclusively used by older people these days'


Bryan Metzger
Fri, November 5, 2021

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and long-time Democratic strategist James Carville. Drew Angerer and Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images

AOC slammed strategist James Carville for blaming "wokeness" for Terry McAuliffe's defeat.

She said that "wokeness" is "a term almost exclusively used by older people these days."

It's the latest in an ongoing intra-Democratic debate about how to talk about issues like race and gender.

On Friday, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York - a leading progressive voice within her party and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress - slammed long-time Democratic strategist James Carville for being out of touch with the modern Democratic Party amid the debate over its election losses.

"The average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits," the congresswoman wrote on Twitter. "So that should tell you all you need to know."

Carville, who originally gained national prominence by helping then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton win the 1992 presidential election, told PBS on Wednesday that "wokeness" was to blame for Democrat Terry McAuliffe's loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

"What went wrong is just stupid wokeness," said Carville, referring to rhetoric about defunding the police and renaming buildings. "Some of these people need to go to a 'woke' detox center or something."

"They're expressing a language that people just don't use, and there's backlash and a frustration at that," he also said. Carville has a history of attacking so-called "wokeness" - a catch-all term with lots of purported meanings, in this case referring to the language progressives use to talk about social issues like race and gender. In 2020, he gave an interview to Vox where he made similar points.

AOC made her critique while calling out a local news story that claimed she said McAuliffe "wasn't woke enough" because she said that "moderate Dems" were "ceding white swing voters to the right" by not forcefully engaging Republicans on the issues.

"How can news outlets even attribute words to me I didn't say?" she wrote. "I said there are limits to trying to mobilize a campaign with a 100% moderate strategy without mobilizing the base. Said nothing [about] 'wokeness' which is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days."

She then took aim at Carville, writing that the "average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits."

She ended by arguing that the term itself, rather than being denigrating to older people, is actually insulting to voters under 45.

"Don't wonder why youth turnout falls when Dems talk about them like this," she wrote. "We need everyone."

THE TYRANT ROARS

China lashes out at press freedom survey in Hong Kong



E - Press freedom advocates rally outside a court in Hong Kong, Thursday, April 22, 2021. China has criticized a press freedom survey, Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, from the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club that found nearly half its members were considering leaving the city. The survey said the members are concerned about a decline in press freedoms under a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing following massive anti-government protests in 2019. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)More

ZEN SOO
Fri, November 5, 2021

HONG KONG (AP) — China on Friday criticized a press freedom survey from the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club that found nearly half its members were considering leaving the city.

The survey said the members were concerned about a decline in press freedoms under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing following massive anti-government protests in 2019.

Eighty-three of the 99 journalists polled said that the working environment had “changed for the worse” since the law was introduced last June. The law outlaws subversion, secession, terrorism and foreign collusion to intervene in the city’s affairs, and has since been used to arrest over 120 people in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

“These results clearly show that assurances that Hong Kong still enjoys press freedom, guaranteed under the Basic Law, are not enough,” FCC President Keith Richburg said. “More steps need to be taken to restore confidence among journalists and to make sure Hong Kong maintains its decades-long reputation as a welcoming place for the international media.”

In a statement, the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong warned the FCC to stop making “noise” and accused the organization of being “black hands” that intervene in the city's affairs.

“There is no absolute press freedom in the world that is above the law,” the statement read. “It is a common international practice for countries to supervise the news media working in their own countries in accordance with the law.”

The survey comes as authorities are cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong. Most of the city’s prominent pro-democracy activists are currently in jail. Critics say the security law has rolled back freedoms promised to Hong Kong for 50 years when it was handed over to China in 1997.

The former British colony was previously known for its vibrant press freedoms, and for decades has served as regional headquarters for many English-language news outlets.

The national security law has been used against journalists in the city. The pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily was forced to close in June after millions of dollars in assets were frozen and several top editors and executives arrested.

The New York Times has transferred some of its staff from Hong Kong to Seoul due to the uncertainties about the city’s prospects for journalism under the security legislation.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday at a regular news briefing that the rights of foreign media and journalists in Hong Kong will be “fully protected” as long as they report in accordance with the law.

Wang said that as of April this year, there were 628 foreign employees with work visas for foreign media in Hong Kong, a 18.5% increase from the same time last year.

“It is a true reflection of how people from all walks of life, including foreign media in Hong Kong, see and feel about the economic and social and media reporting environment in Hong Kong,” he said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said employers need to 'stop asking why there is a labor shortage' and 'start asking how we can make jobs better'

Grace Dean

Fri, November 5, 2021, 

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said workers demanding better pay and benefits are "not really asking a lot."

• Wolf recently signed an executive order aimed at improving labor conditions in the state.

• Workers need better protections to entice them back to work after the pandemic, he said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has said that businesses need to "stop asking why there is a labor shortage" and "start asking how we can make jobs better."

Wolf told elected officials and labor leaders in Allentown on Thursday that workers were looking for jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits, per The Morning Call - and "that's not really asking a lot."

The US is suffering from a huge labor shortage because of mismatches between what workers want and what employers are offering.

Some business owners and lawmakers have blamed the labor shortage on workers, saying that "no one wants to work anymore." Some have attributed it to the supplemental employment benefits introduced during the pandemic, but businesses say they're still having problems finding staff two months after the benefits were cut off.

"There are so many job openings that people are choosing the best option for their family," Wolf said Thursday. "It's time we stop asking why there is a labor shortage and start asking how we can make jobs better."

Under an executive order Wolf signed on October 21, the state's labor department will post on its website a list of bad actors that violate labor laws, misclassify their workers, or fail to carry requisite workers' compensation insurance.

The order also included other clauses related to paid sick leave and compliance with safety standards. Wolf is also seeking to raise the state's minimum wage.

"It's time for us to bring worker protections and supports into the 21st century in the United States, and certainly here in Pennsylvania," Wolf said Thursday, per The Morning Call. "And that's how we support workers, that's how we entice them back to work after this pandemic."

Employment in Pennsylvania was 5.89 million in September, per preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 6.53 million in February 2020. The state's labor participation rate - the percentage of adults working or actively seeking employment - fell from 60.3% to 57.3% over the same time period.

Businesses across Pennsylvania say they're struggling to hire. Joseph Devor, who owns Joey's Chicken Shack near Harrisburg, previously told Insider that he'd had to rely on family members after his workforce fell to just four. Devor raised wages, cut the restaurant's opening hours, and hiked up menu prices as a result.

People have used the pandemic to evaluate what they want from work, and many have changed industries, opted for roles with more flexible schedules or with fewer hours. Others have returned to education, or taken early retirement.

Workers now have more power in the job market and, as a result, companies have been hiking up wages and offering improved benefits to attract them.

"The American working class is demanding fair pay, paid time off and safe working conditions," Jennifer Berrier, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry said Thursday.

"If we want a robust economy driven by the American worker, we must earn back their confidence and offer more than a meager paycheck," she added. "And that's why this isn't really a labor shortage at all - what we're actually seeing is a shortage of jobs that afford workers a future out of poverty."

Expanded Coverage Module: what-is-the-labor-shortage-and-how-long-will-it-last

 

VW CEO Makes EV Pledge as Labor Leaders Criticize Pace of Transition

CEO Herbert Diess and labor leaders also clash over chip crisis

Thu, November 4, 2021,

Herbert Diess said Volkswagen would build a future electric vehicle at its flagship German plant as he sought to head off an escalating conflict with VW’s powerful labor leaders.

A former Rivian executive sues the automaker for gender discrimination

Igor Bonifacic
·Contributing Writer
Thu, November 4, 2021


Electric transport startup Rivian has been sued by one of its former employees. Per The Wall Street Journal, Laura Schwab, an executive who was a vice president of sales and marketing at the automaker until last month, filed a gender discrimination complaint with the California Superior Court in Orange County on Thursday. In the lawsuit, Schwab alleges she was fired by Rivian after she complained of a “toxic ‘bro culture’” that saw other executives exclude her from meetings and ignore her advice.

“The culture at Rivian was actually the worst I’ve experienced in over 20 years in the automotive industry,” Schwab told The Journal. A veteran of the automotive industry, Schwab held executive posts at Aston Martin Lagonda and Jaguar Land Rover before she joined Rivian in November 2020.

According to the outlet, Schwab tried to push the company to address numerous concerns while she was there. In one instance, she allegedly tried to tell the other executives on Rivian’s leadership team that the company had underpriced its vehicles. In yet another situation, she tried to raise concerns about the quality of the automaker’s manufacturing process. In the former case, the company allegedly initially dismissed her advice only to later follow through on it after a male executive raised the same issue.

The suit comes ahead of Rivian’s planned IPO next week where the company will seek to raise as much as $9.6 billion in additional investment. It also recently started producing R1T trucks for customers. More broadly, the suit comes as several other companies in the tech space face scrutiny over their gender equality practices. Most notably, there’s Activision Blizzard, which was sued by California’s fair employment regulator in July for fostering what it described as a sexist “frat boy” workplace culture. The fallout from that lawsuit has been far-reaching. Following months of pressure from employees, the company ended its policy of forced arbitration in cases involving sexual harassment and discrimination and put in place a zero-tolerance stance toward harassment.

Citing the quiet period ahead of its IPO, Rivian declined to comment on the complaint.

Rivian hit with gender discrimination lawsuit that alleges toxic 'bro culture'

Kirsten Korosec

TECHCRUNCH
Thu, November 4, 2021


Rivian, the electric automaker that recently filed for an IPO, has been sued by a former sales and marketing vice president for alleged gender discrimination.

The lawsuit alleges that Laura Schwab, a former sales and marketing executive who had a long employment history with Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin before joining Rivian in November 2020, was fired after reporting gender discrimination to the company's human resources department. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in California Superior Court in Orange County.

A Rivian spokeswoman told TechCrunch that due to a quiet period ahead of its public offering, the company can't offer comment.

Schwab also filed a statement of claim with the American Arbitration Association and laid out her allegations in a blog post published on Medium. The AAA statement, viewed by TechCrunch, describes a "toxic bro culture" at the company's highest levels. The lawsuit alleges that Schwab was regularly ignored by her superior when trying to point out problems. She was regularly excluded from meetings attended by her male peers and decisions regarding her team were made without her input, the statement says. The AAA statement also says that her concerns regarding "Rivian's misleading public statements and flawed business practices," were dismissed.

When she spoke up to human resources about "the boys' club culture and gender discrimination she was experiencing from a C-level executive, Rivian abruptly fired her," the statement reads.

In one excerpt on the blog, Schwab wrote:

Rivian publicly boasts about its culture, so it was a crushing blow when I joined the company and almost immediately experienced a toxic bro culture that marginalizes women and contributes to the company making mistakes. I raised concerns to HR about the gender discrimination from my manager, the "boys club" culture, and the impact it was having on me, my team, and the company. Two days later, my boss fired me.

The complaint comes as Amazon-backed Rivian prepares to become a publicly traded company in one of the most anticipated debuts of the year. A recent regulatory filing showed Rivian hoped to raise up $8.4 billion in its initial public offering. The company plans to offer 135 million shares at a price between $57 and $62. Underwriters also have an option to buy up to 20.25 million additional shares. If underwriters exercise that option, Rivian would raise as much as $9.6 billion.

Based on the number of outstanding shares, that would put its market valuation at about $53 billion. If employee stock options and other restricted shares are considered, Rivian's valuation could be as high as $60 billion. Rivian filed October 1 to become a publicly traded company in the United States.

1,200 year old canoe discovered at Lake Mendota in Wisconsin

By Noah Sheidlower and Justin Lear, CNN 

On a brisk Tuesday at Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, maritime archaeologists, scuba divers, and residents of the Spring Harbor neighborhood stood in the cold as a canoe was brought to shore. But this was not just any racing or touring canoe -- it dates back more than 1,200 years.

© Ebony Cox/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK The Dane County Sheriff's dive team and the Wisconsin Historical Society team recover the 1,200 year old canoe from the bottom of Lake Mendota at Spring Harbor Beach in Madison, Wis

.

© John Hart/State Journal The canoe will undergo preservation efforts over the next two years before it can be displayed in a museum.

After days of planning the best way to raise the dugout canoe, teams of divers rejoiced as the canoe was laid down on the shore safely. According to Jim Skibo, Wisconsin's state archaeologist, the "remarkable" discovery was "something I've never found in my career."

© Ebony Cox/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA TODAY NETWORK Wisconsin Historical Society maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen, middle, and State Archaeologist Jim Skibo, right, share a moment after the recovery of a 1,200-year-old canoe from the bottom of Lake Mendota Tuesday.

"Archaeologists are used to digging up things like broken pieces of stone tools, or pottery or metal artifacts, things that are not organic, so to find something that was organic... it's important to find something like that occasionally."


Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society and owner of Diversions Scuba, first came across what she thought was a log sticking out of the bottom of the lake while riding an underwater scooter in June alongside co-worker Mallory Dragt. After investigating the find, Thomsen determined the log was actually a dugout canoe.

Carbon-14 dating on the canoe determined it was 1,200 years old, making it one of the oldest intact vessels ever found in Wisconsin, according to Skibo.

"I looked at it and it was in such a wonderful state of preservation that I was very suspicious that it was old because wood typically doesn't survive that long," Skibo told CNN.

According to Skibo, archaeologists occasionally find organic fragments of larger items that have been charred or preserved in a special microenvironment, but he noted all organic material breaks down quickly once underground. The canoe survived, he postulates, because it was kept in a constantly wet environment away from light in relatively deeper water. It was discovered on a slope under about 27 feet of water, according to CNN affiliate Madison.com -- he believes it is the deepest any dugout has been recovered.

Skibo said the canoe had net sinkers, which were simple stones that were notched and put on the end of nets for fishing, which further verified to him the canoe was quite old. Because he believed it could have been the oldest intact water vessel in Wisconsin, he knew it had to be taken out quickly because it was uncovered and would have decomposed rapidly.

Over six weeks, Thomsen, Skibo and a few others from the museum collaborated with the Dane County Sheriff's Office on the recovery and excavation. Last week, the Sheriff's Office Dive Team dredged around the canoe and fully exposed the boat, after which rods of rebar were stuck into the bottom of the lake to keep it in place, as reported by Madison.com. Small boats journeyed to the site, and four 45-pound bags of sand were placed in the canoe to give it weight as it was towed into shored at just 1.1 miles per hour.

© John Hart/State Journal A dugout canoe crafted in A.D. 800 was towed for most of its 1-mile trip to shore but guided by divers in shallow water for the final 100 yards or so to Spring Harbor Beach.

The canoe was transferred to a padded aluminum plank, then safely carried to a trailer. The excavation brought onlookers who watched from ashore for over four hours, including Satya Rhodes-Conway, the city's mayor.

Beyond being an uncommon find in the Midwest, the canoe "is a great way to tell multiple stories and to educate people about the people who came here and lived here before, as well as their craftsmanship," Skibo said. Carbon dating revealed that the canoe was likely constructed during the Effigy Mound Period, named after mounds shaped like animals that surrounded Lake Mendota.

© Wisconsin Historical Society The canoe was safely transported to a storage facility, where it was quickly placed in water so it would not dry out.

"Consider cutting down a tree that's two-and-a-half feet wide with a stone tool, and then hollowing it out and making it float. It must have taken hundreds of hours and a great deal of skill," Skibo said.

"You get a new appreciation for people that lived in a time when there were no modern-day tools to do this thing where they could do it quicker."

Those who built the dugout canoes in present-day Dane County were ancestors of the Ho-Chunk Nation, who primarily live in Wisconsin. They are often referred to as the "People of the Big Water."

For the next two years, the canoe will undergo preservation treatments, the first of which will preserve the canoe's liquid environment in a tank at the State Archive Preservation Facility that will kill algae or microorganisms. After that, water that saturated the wood will be replaced with a treatment of polyethylene glycol, to prevent further degradation, according to Skibo.

It will then be displayed in the Wisconsin Historical Society's proposed expanded museum in downtown Madison.

"I'm an archaeologist who tells stories from artifacts, and this is a great one," Skibo said. "It's about transportation. It's about subsistence and fishing. It's about all kinds of things about the time period, and I'm sure it'll be an important display piece and museum."

A FIRST
Alberta judge convicts man of assault for coughing on server in Calgary bar

CALGARY — A man who removed his mask and deliberately coughed on a server at a Calgary bar last year has been convicted of assault

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In a decision released last week, provincial court Judge Heather Lamoureux wrote that “emitting a force consisting of lung-air molecules” can qualify as use of force under the Criminal Code.

"The cough was not a reflexive action, but rather an intentional physical act," Lamoureux wrote.

The man, identified in the decision as 35-year-old Kyle Pruden, was also found guilty of assaulting a bar patron.

Court records show he received a conditional discharge and two years of probation for both assaults.

The altercations happened in November 2020 at the Black Swan Pub in Calgary.

The court decision says Pruden was in the pub playing on a video lottery terminal when he went to the bar to cash out about $160 winnings, the court document says.

Cayla Cossette, the employee, told Pruden that she was unable to pay out the winnings because the bar owner hadn’t replenished the cash float.

The judge’s ruling says Cossette testified that Pruden then took off his mask, started coughing at her and uttered: “Is this because of COVID?”

She testified that she was behind the bar when Pruden coughed on her, so he was less than two metres away.

A 60-year-old frequent patron of the bar gave Pruden $60 and he left the pub.

The court document says Pruden went to Boston Pizza to have beer and pizza before returning to the pub to recover the rest of his winnings.

At that point, it says, Pruden thought the bar patron was an employee and demanded the rest of his money.

The bar patron told him he had no more money to pay him and Pruden hit the man, bruising him.

In her decision, Lamoureux noted that there have been three other cases where people were convicted after coughing on others during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is important to note that the court in each of these cases was not presented with any arguments on the issue of force or intention,” she wrote. “In each instance, guilty pleas were accepted by the court.”

She also wrote that neither the Crown nor defence were able to find any reported trial decisions on whether such an act qualified as a crime.

Lamoureux relied on scientific consensus from the World Health Organization that COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets, which a person carrying the virus would expel when coughing.

“Air pressure is a force at the molecular level in the same manner as physical force visible to the naked eye. This is basic science, uncontroverted, and not requiring any expert opinion,” her decision says.

"Accordingly, when Mr. Pruden engaged in an intentional act of coughing, he was emitting a force consisting of lung air molecules into the atmosphere.

“This is an act of force within the definition of force in … the Criminal Code of Canada.”

— By Daniela Germano in Edmonton

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

The Canadian Press

COVID-19 denier and conspiracy theorist Mak Parhar dead at 48

SOON TO BE A CONSPIRACY THEORY HIMSELF

CBC/Radio-Canada 

© YouTube Mak Parhar died in his home Thursday night of unknown causes. The B.C. Coroners Service is investigating.

Prominent COVID-19 denier Mak Parhar, who gained profile in both the Flat Earth conspiracy community and anti-mask movement, died at his home in New Westminster Thursday.

The 48-year-old's cause of death is not known. A spokesman for the B.C. Coroner Service said a coroner's investigation, which could take months, will be conducted.

Parhar has been in the news the past two years for spreading COVID-19 falsehoods, operating his yoga studio in contravention of public health orders and for being arrested and charged for disobeying quarantine laws.

In a rambling video from Nov. 3, Parhar said he had recently taken ivermectin, a drug that is falsely touted by anti-vaxxers as an off-label treatment for COVID-19, even though he didn't believe COVID-19 was real.

"... That horse parasite remover? So I did take that and I feel like 40 to 50 per cent better. But I am a little bit down right now," he said in the video.

Ivermectin is most commonly used as a livestock dewormer and has been proven effective in treating parasites, not viruses. Health authorities in the U.S. and Canada have issued warnings about taking it for COVID-19.

An earlier video Parhar shot in late October shows him coughing and complaining about being sick, but denying he has what he calls "CONVID."

"I'm jacked up on extra strength Advil and Tylenol for the last two days, that's the only way I can function. If I'm not on Advil or Tylenol, I'm lying in bed," he said.

Parhar's notoriety as a conspiracy theorist grew when he repeatedly violated Canada's Quarantine Act after returning to B.C. from a U.S. flat earth conference in the fall of 2020 — something he bragged about to a crowd rallying in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

He was arrested in November 2020, and was scheduled to appear in court last week but the dates were postponed. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada said Parhar informed the Crown he was too sick to start the trial.

In April 2021, Parhar had his lawsuit accusing the B.C. government of kidnapping and terrorism for arresting him, thrown out of court for being "patently absurd and nonsensical."

The City of Delta suspended the business licence of Parhar's yoga studio in March 2020 after he made false claims that hot yoga kills coronavirus, while encouraging students to show up for class despite public health orders at the time restricting gatherings.

Exclusive-UK gears up to produce rare earth magnets, cut reliance on China


FILE PHOTO: General view of the Walney Extension offshore wind farm operated by Orsted off the coast of Blackpool

Eric Onstad
Thu, November 4, 2021

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain could revive domestic production of super strong magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines with government support, to cut its reliance on China and achieve vital cuts in carbon emissions, two sources with direct knowledge said.

A government-funded feasibility study is due to be published on Friday, laying out the steps Britain must take to restart output of rare earth permanent magnets, the sources said.

A magnet factory would help Britain, hosting the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, meet its goal of banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and slashing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

British production of the magnets vanished in the 1990s when industry found it could not compete with China, but with the huge growth in demand the government is keen to secure enough supply.

Last month, the government set out plans to achieve its net zero strategy, which includes spending 850 million pounds ($1.15 billion) to support the roll out of electric vehicles (EVs) and their supply chains.

The study outlines how a plant could be built by 2024 and eventually produce enough of the powerful magnets to supply 1 million EVs a year, the sources who have read the report said.

"We're looking to turn the tide of shipping all this kind of manufacturing to the Far East and resurrect UK manufacturing excellence," one of the sources said.

The government's Department for Business declined to comment on details regarding a possible magnet factory because the report has not been released.

"The government continues to work with investors through our Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF) to progress plans to build a globally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the UK," a spokesperson said in an email.

EV RAMP UP

British rare earths company Less Common Metals put together the feasibility study and is considering seeking partners to jointly build the factory, the sources said.

LCM is one of the only companies outside of China that transforms rare earth raw materials into the special compounds needed to produce permanent magnets.

Automakers will need the magnets as they ramp up EV output in Britain - Ford said last month it would invest up to 230 million pounds in an English plant to produce around 250,000 EV power units a year from mid-2024.

Rare earth magnets made of neodymium are used in 90% of EV motors because they are widely seen as the most efficient way to power them.

Electric cars with these magnets require less battery power than those with ordinary magnets, so vehicles can travel longer distances before recharging.

A race by automakers to ramp up EVs and countries to switch to wind energy is due to boost demand for permanent magnets in Europe as much as tenfold by 2050, according to the European Union.

The sources said government support would be vital so Britain could compete with China, which produces 90 percent of supply.

The strategy mirrors similar efforts by the EU and the United States to create domestic industries of raw materials, rare earth processing and permanent magnets.

($1 = 0.7404 pounds)

(Reporting by Eric Onstad; Editing by Veronica Brown and Elaine Hardcastle)