South Star Battery Metal secures construction permit for graphite mine in Brazil

Cecilia Jamasmie | 

Aerial view of the Santa Cruz graphite project. (Image courtesy of South Star Battery Metal.)

Canadian junior South Star Battery Metal (TSX-V: STS) (OTCQB: STSBD) is moving ahead with Phase 1 construction of its Santa Cruz graphite mine in Brazil, after receiving the permit from the municipality of Itabela, in Southern Bahia.


The company said it had also held talks with the State of Bahia development agency, the Bahia industrial confederation and representatives from the port facilities in Salvador, Bahia, to update them on its growth plans.

“We presented additional details about Santa Cruz and our planned growth through Phase 2 (25,000 tonnes per year of concentrates) and Phase 3 (50,000 tpy of concentrates),” chief executive Richard Pearce said of the meetings.

South Star, which aims to start production at Santa Cruz by the end of 2023, said the mine will be the first major industrial facility in the municipality and one of the largest in the region as it scales operations.

It added that its Santa Cruz graphite project was the first of a series of industrial and battery metals projects that plans to bring into production.

The Vancouver-based company also noted that its next project in the pipeline is a development project in Alabama, United States, located in the middle of a developing electric vehicle, aerospace and defence hub.

Underestimated

Demand for graphite, an overlooked mineral that is a key ingredient for the electrification of vehicles, is expected to soar.

The lithium-ion battery used to power electric vehicles is made of two electrodes — an anode (negative) on one side and a cathode (positive) on the other. The resistant material, an excellent conductor of electricity and heat, is the only one that can be used in the anode, there are no substitutes.

It is also the largest component in lithium-ion batteries by weight, with each battery containing 20-30% graphite. But due to losses in the manufacturing process, it takes 30 times more graphite than lithium to make the batteries.

According to the World Bank, graphite accounts for nearly 53.8% of the mineral demand in batteries, the most of any. Lithium, despite being a staple across all batteries, accounts for only 4% of demand.

Consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI) sees a roughly 20,000 tonne graphite deficit by the end of 2022, versus a similar-sized surplus in 2020.

Scientists take giant step toward developing room-temperature superconductors

Staff Writer | 

Copper oxide. (Reference image by Adam Rędzikowski, Wikimedia Commons.)

An international team of researchers has uncovered the atomic mechanism behind high-temperature superconductors, a finding that could be revolutionary for super-efficient electrical power.


In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the researchers explain that certain copper oxide materials demonstrate superconductivity at higher temperatures than conventional superconductors, however, the mechanism behind this has remained unknown since their discovery in 1987.

To investigate this, the group developed two new microscopy techniques. The first of these measured the difference in energy between the copper and oxygen atom orbitals, as a function of their location. The second method measured the amplitude of the electron-pair wave function – the strength of the superconductivity – at every oxygen atom and at every copper atom.

“By visualizing the strength of the superconductivity as a function of differences between orbital energies, for the first time ever we were able to measure precisely the relationship required to validate or invalidate one of the leading theories of high-temperature superconductivity, at the atomic scale,” lead researcher Séamus Davis said in a media statement.

As predicted by the theory, the results showed a quantitative, inverse relationship between the charge-transfer energy difference between adjacent oxygen and copper atoms and the strength of the superconductivity.

According to the research team, this discovery could prove a historic step toward developing room-temperature superconductors. Ultimately, these could have far-reaching applications ranging from maglev trains, nuclear fusion reactors, quantum computers, and high-energy particle accelerators, not to mention super-efficient energy transfer and storage.

The scientists also explain that in superconductor materials, electrical resistance is minimized because the electrons that carry the current are bound together in stable ‘Cooper pairs.’

In low-temperature superconductors, Cooper pairs are held together by thermal vibrations, but at higher temperatures, these become too unstable. These new results demonstrate that, in high-temperature superconductors, the Cooper pairs are instead held together by magnetic interactions, with the electron pairs binding together via a quantum mechanical communication through the intervening oxygen atom.

“This has been one of the Holy Grails of problems in physics research for nearly 40 years,” Davis said. “Many people believe that cheap, readily available room-temperature superconductors would be as revolutionary for the human civilization as the introduction of electricity itself.”

Making the radical case for Sinéad O'Connor: She was right all along

Meredith Blake - Yesterday 

Thirty years ago this week, Sinéad O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” effectively destroying her mainstream career with a single act of protest against the Catholic Church.



Then 25, the Grammy-winning Irish singer was an unlikely pop star. Known for the raw, emotive power of her voice and her equally fierce resistance to industry pressure — most famously, by shaving her head — O'Connor had risen to international fame with her transcendent cover of Prince's “Nothing Compares 2 U” and her vulnerable, tear-streaked performance in its accompanying video.

A sharp critic of racism and misogyny in the music business who refused to play the national anthem before her concerts, O'Connor was already a controversial figure. But the "SNL" incident — in which O'Connor sang Bob Marley's "War" before tearing up the photo to protest, she later said, the Catholic Church's enablement of child abuse — turned her into a full-blown pariah. Two weeks later, O'Connor was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden and fled, crying, into the arms of Kris Kristofferson.

She has been in pop culture purgatory ever since, continuing to write and perform music for three decades but never coming close to the levels of acclaim or visibility she achieved in the early ’90s.

The ugly incident at the Dylan concert opens "Nothing Compares," a new documentary that offers a sympathetic reappraisal of O'Connor as an iconoclastic artist whose provocations were decades ahead of their time

“It made this huge mark on me as a young Irish woman to witness this hero of mine being treated the way she was,” said Kathryn Ferguson, director of “Nothing Compares,” which premiered this week on Showtime. “The seeds for this film were really planted at that moment. It was a story that stuck with me throughout my adult life. I couldn't understand why there hadn't been a cinematic feature made about her.”

Ferguson, who grew up in Belfast, recalls her father playing “The Lion and the Cobra,” O’Connor’s debut album, on repeat in the car “as we drove around really gray, Troubles-ridden Northern Ireland in the late ’80s,” she said during a recent Zoom conversation from London. “It became the soundtrack to my childhood.”

When Ferguson was a young teenager, she and her friends discovered O’Connor on their own terms and swiftly fell in love: “We just felt like we needed her."

As a graduate student many years later, Ferguson contacted O’Connor’s management team about using some of her music in her thesis film, a connection that eventually led to Ferguson directing the video for O’Connor’s song “Fourth and Vine” in 2013.

“I remembered all of this passion I'd had as a young teenager,” Ferguson said, “and I just really wanted to try and work out how to make this film.”

She spent much of the next five years “talking incessantly” about the project before it finally started to come together in early 2018. The timing was right: The #MeToo movement was surging in the U.S. and elsewhere. In Ireland, same-sex marriage had recently become legal and abortion was about to follow. “The world was on fire with women speaking out,” Ferguson said. “It felt a wee bit mad that this incredible figure wasn't being mentioned in any of this — someone who has inspired so many of the young activists that were directly changing the country.”

Using extensive archival video — including footage from a wedding at which a teenage O’Connor sang “Evergreen” — brief, stylized re-creations and interviews with O’Connor’s friends, collaborators and contemporaries, “Nothing Compares” traces O’Connor’s meteoric rise from troubled teenager to Rolling Stone cover girl, and her even more precipitous fall from grace. A theme throughout the film is the lingering effect of her traumatic childhood: O’Connor endured physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother and was sent to live in a church-run Magdalene home as a teenager.

Most important, “Nothing Compares” features an extensive interview with O’Connor. Her now-gravelly voice can be heard throughout the film, reflecting on aspects of her life and work, but her face appears only in archival video — a conscious filmmaking choice, Ferguson explained:

“Our observation was just how amazingly well the media has done in reducing her voice by mocking and ridiculing her. The key takeaway I wanted was that you heard her voice and it wouldn't be interrupted. Having her narrate her story on her own terms was of utmost importance.” (The other interviews are also voiceover only.)

O’Connor shares insights into some of her most notable songs and their connection to traumatic chapters in her life — particularly her painful relationship with her mother, who died in a car crash in 1985, a few years before O’Connor burst onto the music scene. She was thinking of her mother while she made the beautifully spare video for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which primarily consisted of a close-up on O’Connor’s tear-streaked face against a black background

“Every time I sing the song I think of my mother. I never stopped crying for my mother,” O’Connor says in the film. “I think it’s funny the world fell in love with me because of crying and a tear.”

Notably, the film doesn’t include the song, which was written by Prince. A postscript explains that the musician’s estate denied use of her recording in the documentary.

Ferguson said she was never given a reason for the refusal: “At the end of the day, it's their prerogative. We just had to accept that that was the situation and do our best to creatively overcome it.” (A representative for the estate did not respond to a request for comment.)

She was, however, able to secure outtakes from the video, which, along with commentary from director John Maybury and others involved in the production, helps flesh out this vital chapter in O’Connor’s biography.

The documentary intentionally focuses on a brief but formative era in O’Connor’s life. Although it briefly considers the legacy she’s had on other female artists and activists, it does not explore her turbulent journey since 1992, which has included several marriages, a bitter custody battle, mental health struggles and, in January, the death by suicide of her teenage son.

“What went on in this era has had horrific reverberations throughout the rest of her life,” Ferguson said. “But as she says in the film, the positive thing is the commercial career that was annihilated after her actions in 1992 wasn't the career that she was seeking.”

It’s impossible to know how a Sinéad O’Connnor might be received today, given the way the culture wars of the ’90s have metastasized and taken over contemporary political discourse in the United States. But it’s clear that O’Connor was radically ahead of her time in many ways, from her refusal to conform to prescribed gender roles to her songs about police violence against Black people.

Most obviously, the church she criticized for perpetuating child abuse and the exploitation of women has now apologized for wrongdoing in Ireland and around the world. Back in 1992, many people claimed they didn't understand O'Connor's message, but as Ferguson noted, O'Connor spoke about her experiences with abuse in many interviews before "SNL" (including one with The Times.) "People just chose not to listen," she said.

Like many other women who were shunned in the ’90s and dismissed as “crazy," O’Connor is receiving an overdue cultural reconsideration — one she spearheaded by writing a memoir, “Rememberings,” published to acclaim last year. Her music is finding new fans: “Drink Before the War" was recently included in an episode of “Euphoria.” And “Nothing Compares,” which debuted at Sundance, is bringing O’Connor’s story to a generation of viewers who weren’t yet alive when she immolated her career at 30 Rock.

Ferguson said that many of the screenings get rowdy and emotional. Young people come up to her “with their eyes flashing, just incensed and inspired” by O’Connor’s ordeal. “There’s audible gasps when you get to that backlash moment, because it's still very shocking to see that this young singer from Dublin is causing this much noise. [Her detractors] obviously saw her as a threat — somebody that had to be silenced.”

Ferguson doesn’t know if O’Connor herself has seen the film, but, she said, “I really hope she feels proud.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

 

AUSTRALIA

Fortescue to spend $6.2bn to rid iron ore ops of fossil fuels by 2030
Reuters | 

Credit: Fortescue Future Industries

Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group said on Tuesday it would spend an estimated $6.2 billion to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and achieve “real zero terrestrial emissions” across its iron ore operations by the end of the decade.


The investment includes the Perth-based miner installing an additional 2-3 gigawatts of renewable energy generation and battery storage, as well as incremental costs associated with beefing up its green mining fleets and locomotives.


Largely planned in fiscal years 2024 to 2028, the investment will enable displacement of about 700 million litres of diesel and 15 million gigajoules of gas per annum by 2030, and prevent emission of 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the miner said.

The world’s fourth-largest iron ore producer anticipates cumulative operational savings of $3 billion by 2030 with payback on investment by 2034, and expects to save $818 million in costs per year from 2030 onwards.

Real zero terrestrial emissions refer to direct and indirect emissions from the firm’s operations and from generation of purchased electricity, steam, among others.

Fortescue and its green-energy unit Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) are trying to rapidly develop infrastructure and technology to produce green hydrogen, as the miner transitions from a pure-play iron ore producer to a green energy firm.

The miner, led by chairman and iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest, has chalked in $600 million to $700 million in capital expense for FFI in fiscal 2023 to build a full green hydrogen supply chain by the end of the decade, potentially positioning itself as a key player in supply of the alternate fuel.

“There’s no doubt that the energy landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years and this change has accelerated since Russia invaded Ukraine,” Forrest said on Tuesday.

The miner expects “attractive economic returns” on operating cost savings after eliminating diesel, natural gas, and carbon offset purchases from its supply chain, it added.

(By Sameer Manekar; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Philippine town revokes permit for Tampakan copper-gold project

Staff Writer |

Camp at Tampakan copper-gold project on Mindanao Island, southern Philippines. 

( Image: Sagittarius Mines.)

A local government in the Philippines has cancelled Sagittarius Mines’ permit for the Tampakan copper-gold project in the country’s South Cotabato province, citing concerns about the survival of hundreds of indigenous peoples that live nearby.


Tampakan, considered the Southeast Asian country’s biggest untapped copper-gold reserve, was stalled for over a decade following a 2010 ban on mining, which was extended to open-pit operations in 2017.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte, who ended his six-year term in June, lifted the nationwide ban late last year to revitalise the mining industry.

The move paved the way for Sagittarius Mines to reopen the $5.9 billion project, in which commodities giant Glencore (LON: GLEN) used to have a controlling stake, but abandoned it amid regulatory uncertainties.

Mayor Leonard Escobillo of Tampakan told local press the permit had been revoked due the company’s “fraud, erroneous classification and misrepresentation of its business status.”

“There’s nothing personal in this case. We are just doing our job,” Escobillo told reporters.
The asset, which has estimated resources of 15 million tonnes of copper and 17.6 million ounces of gold, was one of at least 12 metallic mines expected to begin commercial operations this year.

Most of the mines awaiting permits are nickel projects, one of the metals in highest demand these days due to its use electric vehicles batteries and other devices that can help the world transition to cleaner technologies.

Tampakan was expected to have an average annual production capacity of 375,000 tonnes of copper and 360,000 ounces of gold in concentrate.

CANADA

Lackluster interest among youth a big problem for mining

Attracting more young people to mining presents significant challenges for the industry in the years ahead, say experts. 

Blair McBride 

Mining Industry Human Resources Council photo

As a career choice, mining has seen better times.


Over the last several years, the focus of young people has drifted away from mining as they contemplate their careers and enter post-secondary education.

Mining, in fact, ranked last in a list of nine career sectors in an Abacus Data poll conducted in 2021 with the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR).

“We had Abacus Data poll 3,000 youth across the country on perceptions of work in different sectors,” said Ryan Montpellier, executive director of MiHR. “Only 11% of youth polled identified that they would be likely to work in the mining industry. We struggle at a base layer trying to attract youth to careers in the sector.”

Mining is among the least popular fields for young people in Canada, according to a Mining Industry Human Resources Council and Abacus Data poll. Mining Industry Human Resources Council image


The poll also found that 70% of youth polled “definitely” or “probably would not” consider pursuing mining. Health care, high tech and arts and culture were the top three most desirable sectors on the list.

Montpellier, who calls the currently tight labour market in mining “somewhat dire,” attributes the lacklustre interest in mining among young people to several factors.

One is that most mining jobs are in rural and remote areas where there aren’t enough people to support large, industrial projects.

“We’re seeing an exodus from rural Canada into more urban locations, where the mining jobs aren’t,” he said.

Another is that young people associate mining with images that are out of touch with how the industry actually works.

“A lot of the feedback that we received from youth about careers in mining is that they just had no clue,” Montpellier said. “Mining is not in their backyard. Their perceptions of careers in mining were dated. They were based on stereotypes from TV shows. So, we need to change that. There’s a communications issue there.”

He also thinks the image of mining presented to young people is too often only from an environmental activist perspective.

“[The MiHR is] trying to link what we value in society with the minerals and metals that we need. Everything that we have, be it electric vehicles, cell phones, transportation…all of that happens with minerals and metals, and Canada is quite fortunate that we have access to a rich array of minerals and metals. Our industry is extracting them in the most environmentally sustainable and stringent jurisdiction in the world. Canada is the place to do that.”\

Increasing demand

The waning interest in mining comes at an awkward time as the industry will face increasing demand for labour and talent in the coming years.

The MiHR’s “Canadian Mining Labour Market Report”, published in 2020 said the mining industry will need about 79,680 new hires between 2020 and 2030 in its baseline employment outlook scenario, and 113,130 in an expansionary scenario.

Most of those required new hires will be needed to replace workers retiring from the industry.

The extraction and milling sub-sectors of mining are projected to experience hiring gaps in all occupational categories, with the largest shortages forecast in trades occupations (830 jobs) and all other occupations (1,630 jobs).

Responding to that report, Montpellier said that for some in-demand occupations the mining world needs to increase its share of heavy equipment operators and mechanics.

But for more mining-specific roles, he said he believes the industry needs to play a bigger role in helping the post-secondary education system attract more future miners.

One way it’s trying to do that is with its National Youth Mining Career Awareness Strategy to address perceptions about the industry and its We Need Mining, Mining Needs You campaign.

If efforts to draw more young people into the industry aren’t successful, Montpellier said talent will have to come from outside of Canada, a switch from the country’s traditional reputation as an “exporter of mining talent.”

“We’ve had people come here to work and then they go home with that expertise. But maybe there is more we can do to keep them here,” he said.
Promoting mining for youth, diverse candidates

Although three generations of his family have worked in mining, recent geology graduate Pierre-Olivier Leroux can understand why many young people aren’t gravitating towards the industry.

What many youth today learn about mining reflects outdated perspectives, said Leroux, who graduated with a degree in geology from the University of Laval in Quebec City last May.

He now works as a mineral technology professor at Thetford Mines Cegep in Thetford, Quebec.

“When we hear about mining we hear about the vast amounts of money put into the projects and there’s always bad press about the environmental part. People have images from the 1970s and they think that things work the same way now but it’s not true,” he said, pointing to industry standards requiring miners to remediate sites once operations end.

In addition to the environment, proper work-life balance is also very important for millennials, even more than high salaries, Leroux said.

That’s where he believes the industry can do more to meet the needs of future miners if the job entails going to the far north where the mines are.

“You really have to insist on how to accommodate someone who wants kids. It’s an issue.
Not all young mining professionals are the same. The (companies) should work with those potential candidates. They should ask them what would make them come here? But it’s a hard one for sure,” he said.

Montpellier also acknowledges that the industry needs to do more to attract people of colour, Indigenous people, new Canadians and especially women.

“We know it’s a challenge,” he said, noting that a 2022 report from MiHR found women made up only 16% of undergraduate mining engineering enrolments between 2016 and 2020. That puts the field in the bottom half of female representation in engineering, along with electrical, computer and mechanical; although metallurgical and geological engineering had higher enrolment rates.

Women’s representation in mining engineering programs has been among the lowest of engineering programs in Canada, the Mining Industry Human Resources Council found. Mining Industry Human Resources Council graphic

“You factor in the ageing workforce, remote mines, lack of diversity — it leads to a perfect storm of an extremely tight labour market and a historically low unemployment rate in our sector,” he said. “I think part of the solution here is changing the culture of the industry to make it more inclusive and open and attract more diverse talent. But also ensuring we’re attracting more diverse talent into the university system as well.”

While representation of women in mining engineering in recent years is relatively low, progress has made in recent decades.

Industry veteran Pat Dillon has witnessed important changes in her more than 32-year career in mining, which saw her become president of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) from 2006 to 2008 and was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2021.

She also serves as president and CEO of PDAC Mining Matters, an organization that has provided educational resources promoting mineral literacy to more than 800,000 students and teachers in Canada, in English, French and several Indigenous languages.

In a phone interview with The Northern Miner, Dillon noted that while mining disciplines have never attracted many female students, women made up as little as 4% of students around 20 years ago.

“I know when I was at school studying geology there were women in the earth sciences geological program but there were very few in mining engineering,” she noted about her time at the University of Toronto, where she earned a BSc in geology in 1974.

“I’m not going to sugar coat it. There’s a long, long way to go.”

Dillon says she’s encouraged that the increasing representation of women in mining – however modest – will spur more women to enter the field because once they start seeing “like individuals” having success “people start thinking of the industry as a career more and more.”
Scope of the problem

Educational data further bears out the declining interest in mining.

Between 2010 and 2020, enrolment at all post-secondary levels across Canada for mining engineering programs rose from a low of 1,227 students in 2010/2011 to a high of 2,049 in 2014/2015, according to data from Statistics Canada. Enrolment then dipped to 1,311 in 2019/2020. Information for years preceding 2010 was not available.

Looking at the 2014 to 2020 period, Montpellier said a “clear pattern of a decline in total enrolment” is evident in mining engineering, with enrolment falling by 42%.

Montpellier also noted that while mining engineering enrolment declined in those years, more students were registering for other engineering fields.

StatsCan data shows that total enrolment numbers in engineering sat at 91,947 in 2010 and increased each subsequent year, reaching 131,613 in 2019/2020.

Although mining hasn’t had the lowest enrolment numbers out of all engineering fields — such as relatively niche fields like agricultural or marine engineering — many thousands of fewer students are signing up for mining than conventional fields like general engineering, chemical, civil, electrical or mechanical.

Graduation numbers in mining engineering are even lower. Between 2010 to 2019, the year with the lowest number of graduates was 2010 when 246 graduated. Numbers rose steadily to a high of 498 in 2016, then fell gradually to 393 in 2019.With geological and earth sciences, enrolment rates have been significantly higher than mining engineering.

Between 2010 and 2020, enrolment climbed from 5,775 in 2010 to its decade peak of 6,696 in 2014/2015, before declining to its lowest level of 4,797 in 2019/2020. The number of students who ended up graduating in those fields has been noticeably lower. The decade opened at its lowest graduation level of 1,191, then climbed to 1,728 in 2017 before dipping to 1,386 in 2019.

Trevali CEO leaves after two managers convicted of involuntary manslaughter

Cecilia Jamasmie | 

The Caribou mine, about 50 km west of Bathurst, New Briswick. 

(Image courtesy of Trevali.)

Trevali Mining Corp.’s president and chief executive Ricus Grimbeek has left the company following a Burkina Faso court’s verdict that found two employees guilty of involuntary manslaughter.


The convictions are related to a tragic incident at the Canadian company’s Perkoa mine in the West African nation caused by a flash flood in April, which trapped and killed eight miners.

South African national Hein Frey was fined $3,000 and given a suspended 24-month prison sentence. Australian Daryl Christensen, who worked for contracting company Byrnecut, was handed a 12-month suspended sentence and fined $1,500.

In addition to Grimbeek, former head of Vale’s Sudbury operations, Trevali’s chief operating officer Derek du Preez and director Dan Isserow also resigned, the company said in a press release late on September 16.

The struggling miner has also begun a court-approved sales process for its interest in the 90%-owned Rosh Pinah zinc-lead-silver mine, in Namibia, and its fully-owned Caribou mine in New Brunswick, Canada.

Unseasonal, heavy rainfall caused flash floods on April 16 that left eight workers missing underground at Perkoa.

Trevali spent the next two months pumping out about 137 million litres of water. Equipment had to be imported from other countries, including Ghana and South Africa, raising questions about how prepared for a disaster the company was.

The underground mine, which produced about 316.2 million pounds of zinc in 2021, has remained halted since the tragic incident and Trevali has suspended its production and cost guidance for 2022 for the operation.

Delisting

Earlier this month, the Vancouver-based company announced it was delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange, effective Monday October 3 after close. The decision came after the company filed an application for creditor protection under Canada’s Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).

CCAA allows companies to restructure and carry on their business while avoiding the “social and economic consequences of bankruptcy.”

Trading is also expected to stop on the Lima Stock Exchange, OTCQX and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

"Chaos costs, conflict": Notley says UCP leader out of touch with Alberta concerns

EDMONTON — Alberta's Opposition leader says the province is due for more chaos, costs and conflict after Danielle Smith's victory last night in the United Conservative Party leadership race.


"Chaos costs, conflict": Notley says UCP leader out of touch with Alberta concerns

© Provided by The Canadian Press

After Smith won the leadership last night in a narrow six-ballot win, the NDP's Rachel Notley says the party will continue to be consumed with its internal bickering instead of bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.

Notley says Smith, who hasn't yet faced any general voters, has no mandate to impose some of the measures she campaigned on, such as the proposed sovereignty act.

She chided Smith for being scared to run in an already-open Calgary constituency and called on her to declare a byelection in that riding as soon as possible.

Notley says her party is focused on things Albertans actually care about, such as the high cost of living.

She says her party is ready for an election any time.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 7, 2022.

Danielle Smith, new premier of Canada's oil-rich Alberta, set to defy Trudeau

Nia Williams
Publishing date :Oct 07, 2022

Danielle Smith speaks at a leadership campaign event on July 14.

 Bailey Seymour/Special to Postmedia

Danielle Smith, the incoming premier of Canada’s main oil-producing province Alberta, has set the stage for an antagonistic relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after winning her leadership race with plans to push back against federal laws.

Smith, 51, was chosen by members to lead Alberta’s ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) on Thursday, just seven months ahead of the next provincial election.

“Today marks a new beginning in the Alberta story,” Smith told UCP members after winning the leadership race. “No longer will Alberta ask permission from Ottawa to be prosperous and free. … We will not have our resources landlocked or our energy phased out of existence by a virtue-signaling prime minister.”

Trudeau tweeted his congratulations to Smith, who will be sworn into office on Tuesday.

“Let’s work together to build a better future for Albertans – by delivering concrete results, making life more affordable, creating good jobs, and more,” Trudeau said.

Alberta, home to Canada’s vast oil sands and the world’s third-largest crude reserves, has long had a strained relationship with Trudeau’s government in Ottawa, stemming from a sense that the federal government’s climate polices are damaging its oil and gas industry.

Some of Canada’s top oil and gas companies, including Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, Suncor Energy and Cenovus Energy, are all headquartered in Calgary, the business capital of the province.

Smith campaigned on an “Alberta First” slogan designed to appeal to grassroots members on the right wing of the party and has promised to introduce the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which would allow the province to refuse to enforce specific federal laws it does not like.

Political commentators and legal experts said the act is unconstitutional and would likely be struck down in court, but could further sour relations between Ottawa and Alberta, while uncertainty about what the act will actually contain may spook the business community.

“On the business side you might get a bit of a drop in investment confidence until they see exactly what is going on,” said Lori Williams, a political science professor at Calgary’s Mount Royal University.

Williams said she expected Smith would be forced to modify the legislation by the UCP caucus, which could hurt her standing among the grassroots members who voted for her.

“The problem with Smith is that she has ramped up the anger and raised expectations, and the question is if they cannot be met, does that anger turn on her,” Williams said.

The Alberta Federation of Labour, the province’s largest worker advocacy organization, said in a statement that the incoming premier should focus on improving the life of Albertans rather than defying Ottawa.

“With due respect, the vast majority of working Albertans are not thinking about the Sovereignty Act,” said AFL President Gil McGowan. “They’re thinking about things like jobs, inflation, healthcare, and education.”

Smith has promised to mount another legal challenge to the federal government’s carbon tax, despite the Supreme Court of Canada ruling against a similar challenge brought by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario in 2021.

She was also a vocal critic of public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and took aim at the federal government’s vaccine mandate policy in her victory speech.

“We will not be told what we must put in our bodies in order to work,” she said.

Michael Taube, a columnist and a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, described Smith as a strong supporter of private enterprise, free markets, trade liberalization and economic liberty.

“Smith promotes her own ideas instead of letting society determine which ideas she should reject,” Taube wrote in the National Post newspaper on Thursday, adding she will be a boon for Canada and conservatism.

 (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jonathan Oatis)

Explainer-What will change if federal 

marijuana ban is loosened?

Fri, October 7, 2022 

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden has said he would pardon people convicted in federal court of simple marijuana possession, and that his administration is reconsidering the classification of cannabis, which has been in the most dangerous category of drugs.

The move has been welcomed by some as a long-overdue reform, but the effects of reclassifying marijuana are not clear, and could end up meaning more regulation rather than less.

HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL BE AFFECTED BY THE PARDON?

Relatively few people in the United States are convicted of simple possession in federal court. Most are convicted of more serious trafficking offenses, which are not covered by the pardon. A senior administration official said more than 6,500 people with prior federal convictions could be affected by the pardons. While none of them is currently in prison, clearing their convictions could remove barriers to finding jobs or housing.

The vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place at the state level, where each state has its own laws ranging from criminalization to full legalization, and will not be affected.

HOW COULD MARIJUANA BE RECLASSIFIED?

Marijuana is currently classified as a so-called Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, meaning its possession is almost entirely banned except for certain research purposes. The classification is the same as that of heroin used for drugs deemed to have no legitimate medical uses.

Moving marijuana to a lower tier on the Controlled Substances Act schedule would allow it to be prescribed by doctors. If it became a Schedule II drug, like most opioids used for pain management, those prescriptions would still be tightly controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration. If it were moved to Schedule V - the lowest tier - it would be minimally controlled, like cough syrups containing small amounts of codeine.

Biden has not expressed a view about where marijuana should fall. The decision is ultimately made by the DEA, with input from the Food and Drug Administration.

HAVEN'T MANY STATES ALREADY LEGALIZED MEDICAL MARIJUANA?

Yes. Thirty-seven states regulate cannabis for medical use, and 19 also allow recreational use.

However, existing state medical marijuana programs would still conflict with federal law if marijuana were rescheduled, according to Alex Kreit of the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University.

Doctors in some states are currently permitted to recommend, rather than prescribe, marijuana for certain medical conditions, since only the FDA can approve prescription drugs. The agency has not approved, and does not regulate, the products dispensed under state law.

Rescheduling marijuana as a prescription drug would mean marijuana products sold as medicine would be subject to FDA regulation, and doctors would have to follow the same regulations that apply to other drugs in their state. Though once approved by the FDA for any medical use, doctors can prescribe a drug for other conditions, so-called off-label use.

"Big pharma might be the big exciting player here, because they have the most to gain if we were to reschedule but it was still something that was very highly regulated," said Douglas Berman, a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

WHAT ABOUT STATES THAT HAVE LEGALIZED RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA?

Selling marijuana for recreational use would still be prohibited by federal law unless it were removed from the schedule entirely. Kreit said that was unlikely, since the Controlled Substances Act requires all drugs with potential for abuse to be scheduled, except alcohol and tobacco.

In recent years, federal authorities have declined to enforce marijuana prohibition within states where it is legal.

Even if marijuana were descheduled, Congress would likely intervene to impose some control, as it has for tobacco, Kreit said.

States could still ban marijuana even if the federal ban were lifted.

HOW COULD RESCHEDULING AFFECT HOW MARIJUANA BUSINESSES OPERATE?

Marijuana businesses have been in limbo for years. Despite the lack of federal enforcement, financial institutions have continued to shy away from them even in states that have fully legalized the drug for fear of running afoul of federal laws.

Jim Thorburn, a lawyer who represents marijuana businesses, said that would not necessarily change if marijuana were rescheduled.

"Recreational use would still be problematic because that could still be considered unlawful drug trafficking," he said. Still, Thorburn said a regulatory regime that created more avenues for legal marijuana might ease access to the financial system.

Kreit also said that rescheduling the drug "could give more banks and financial operators more confidence and comfort" in dealing with marijuana businesses.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; editing by Amy Stevens and Bill Berkrot)

Assange supporters form human chain at UK parliament

Sat, October 8, 2022

STORY: Hundreds of protesters gathered in a line which stretched from parliament's perimeter railings and snaked across nearby Westminster Bridge to the other side of the River Thames.

Stella Assange, who is married to the Australian-born activist, said the British government should speak to authorities in the United States to end the extradition bid which was launched in 2019.

"It's already gone on for three-and-a-half years. It is a stain on the United Kingdom and is a stain on the Biden administration," she said.

Assange, 51, is wanted by U.S. authorities on 18 counts, including a spying charge, relating to WikiLeaks' release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables.

Washington says he put lives in danger. His supporters say he has been victimized because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assange's legal team have lodged an appeal at Britain's High Court against London's decision to extradite him.