Thursday, July 06, 2023

World’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant Being Planned in Canada

Will Wade
Wed, July 5, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- A Canadian utility is starting early work to expand a nuclear plant, potentially building the world’s biggest facility as growing demand for clean energy spurs interest in atomic energy.

The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment of adding as much as 4.8 gigawatts of capacity to its plant in Canada’s most-populous province. The plant’s eight reactors currently have about 6.2 gigawatts of capacity and supply 30% of the province’s power.

The expansion would make the site larger than Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the biggest in the world with seven reactors and more than 8 gigawatts of capacity.

The announcement comes amid growing recognition that carbon-free nuclear power is likely to play an important role in the global battle against climate change. Canada is developing plans to mandate a net-zero power grid by 2035, and the Bruce project would be the first conventional nuclear plant in the province in three decades. Another utility in the region, Ontario Power Generation Inc., is involved in an effort to develop a new type of advanced reactor.

“New nuclear generation is going to be critical to building the clean grid of the future,” said Todd Smith, Ontario’s energy minister.

World’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant Being Planned in Canada

Will Wade
Wed, July 5, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- A Canadian utility is starting early work to expand a nuclear plant, potentially building the world’s biggest facility as growing demand for clean energy spurs interest in atomic energy.

The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment of adding as much as 4.8 gigawatts of capacity to its plant in Canada’s most-populous province. The plant’s eight reactors currently have about 6.2 gigawatts of capacity and supply 30% of the province’s power.

The expansion would make the site larger than Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the biggest in the world with seven reactors and more than 8 gigawatts of capacity.

The announcement comes amid growing recognition that carbon-free nuclear power is likely to play an important role in the global battle against climate change. Canada is developing plans to mandate a net-zero power grid by 2035, and the Bruce project would be the first conventional nuclear plant in the province in three decades. Another utility in the region, Ontario Power Generation Inc., is involved in an effort to develop a new type of advanced reactor.

“New nuclear generation is going to be critical to building the clean grid of the future,” said Todd Smith, Ontario’s energy minister.

Ontario wants to expand Bruce Power, Canada's first new large-scale nuclear build in 3 decades

Bruce Nuclear in Tiverton, Ont., is already the largest

generating station in the world

An aerial view of the Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Kincardine, Ont.
An aerial view of the Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Kincardine, Ont., is shown in August 2003. (J.P. Moczulski/Canadian Press)

Driven by clean energy goals and surging electricity demand, Ontario has announced it wants to add a third nuclear generating station to Bruce Power near Kincardine, which, if built, would be the first new large-scale nuclear plant construction in Canada in three decades. 

On Wednesday, Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith said the new construction would generate up to 4,800 megawatts, enough to power 4.8-million homes, nearly doubling the power plant's output. 

It would be located at Bruce Power's current facility on the rim of Lake Huron in Tiverton, Ont. The site currently has two generating stations with eight reactor units, but according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, two reactors are currently being refurbished. 

Securing a third generating station at Bruce Power will be a lengthy process, one that may take a decade and require the province to clear a number of regulatory hurdles. Public input and consultations with nearby communities, including First Nations, are prerequisites for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's multi-stage licensing process.

Nuclear power has won new converts

With infamous accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chornobyl and Fukushima over the last five decades, nuclear power had earned a bad reputation.

But as nations look to slash emissions and de-carbonize their economies in preparation for climate change, nuclear energy has won over new converts, who see it as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

a guy
On Wednesday, Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith said if built, the new reactor would generate up to 4,800 megawatts, enough to power 4.8 million homes, on the site of Bruce Power's current generating station, on the rim of Lake Huron in Tiverton, Ont. (Canadian Press)

"I don't think anyone would have seen this coming, certainly two or three years ago," said Dr. Chris Keefer, a Toronto emergency physician and the president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, a group that has long urged governments to build new CANDU reactors.

"Any investment in this technology leads to not only clean air, not only medical isotopes, not only climate action, but also really good things for Ontario working people."

Keefer, who began supporting nuclear power because of the nuclear isotopes used in medicine that are created as a byproduct of the energy-making process, said unlike the nuclear technology of other countries, Canada's CANDU reactors are known as some of the safest in the world. 

"We have, I think, the world's safest nuclear reactor," he said, adding the technology's passive safety systems rely on large amounts of water to keep the system cool for up to 12 days before energy officials must intervene. 

Canada doesn't have a perfect safety record

Despite having a solid international reputation, there have been a number of nuclear incidents involving Canadian reactors since the 1950s, including the world's first nuclear reactor accident in 1952, when an experimental reactor at Chalk River, Ont., experienced significant damage to its core caused by overheating fuel rods.

More recently, in the Greater Toronto Area, Darlington Nuclear Generating Station saw the release of 200,000 litres of water containing trace amounts of radioactive isotopes into Lake Ontario after workers accidentally filled the wrong tank with water in 2009. 

An aerial view of the nuclear power plant at Darlington in Ontario
Canada's most recent nuclear incident happened here at Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, when a water tank mix-up led to the discharge of 200,000 litres of water containing trace amounts of radioactive isotopes, which officials said did not pose harm to residents. (Ontario Power Generation)

While potential safety issues are one thing, cost is another, according to critics like Jack Gibbons, the chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, an environmental group that doesn't see nuclear power as a viable solution for climate change. 

"The Bruce nuclear station is already the largest nuclear station in the world and it doesn't make any economic sense to make it bigger, since we've got much lower cost and cleaner and safer options to keep our lights on."

Gibbons said if Ontario's government really wanted to lower electricity costs, it would lift the moratorium on Great Lakes wind power the provincial government imposed by the then-Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty in 2011. 

"Great Lakes wind power could meet more than 100 per cent of our electricity needs at a much lower cost than a new nuclear reactor."

Gibbons adds that, if Ontario wants to do its part to help mitigate climate change, there are zero-emission options that are much less complicated. 

"A new nuclear reactor will take 10 to 15 years. We need to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas pollution before 2030, and a new nuclear reactor can't do that, whereas wind and solar can be built in 12 months or less."

To build the plant, the province would need federal approvals. Smith, Ontario's energy minister, said Bruce Power would start community consultations on Wednesday and conduct an environmental assessment for federal approval to determine the feasibility of another nuclear plant.

The announcement is part of the province's wider "open for business" approach that casts itself as the supplier of jobs and opportunity into the future through the manufacturing of EV batteries, the mining of critical minerals in the north and reshaping the province's environmental safeguards to foster economic growth.

Trudeau Likens Bill C-18 Battle To World War Two Fight for Democracy as Government Suspends Meta Advertising (But Not Liberal Party Ads)


Michael Geist

The government escalated the battle over Bill C-18 yesterday, announcing that it was suspending advertising on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms due the company’s decision to comply with the bill by blocking news sharing and its reluctance to engage in further negotiations on the issue. While the ad ban applies to federal government advertising, Liberal party officials confirmed they plan to continue political advertising on the social networks, suggesting that principled opposition ends when there might be a political cost involved. At issue is roughly $11 million in annual advertising by the federal government, a sum that pales in comparison to the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s estimate of at least $100 million in payments in Canada for news links from Meta alone.

In addition to raising the economic cost to Meta for stopping news sharing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau increased the rhetoric, describing Canada as having been “attacked” by Meta and likening the government’s fight over the bill to defending democracy in Ukraine or during the Second World War [at 13:30]:

Facebook decided that Canada was a small country, small enough that they could reject our asks. They made the wrong choice by deciding to attack Canada. We want to defend democracy. This is what we’re doing across the world, such as supporting Ukraine. This is what we did during the Second World War. This is what we’re doing every single day in the United Nations.

There are strongly held views on both sides of the Bill C-18 debate, but the suggestion that stopping sharing news links on a social network is in any way comparable to World War 2 is embarrassingly hyperbolic and gives the sense of a government that has lost perspective on the issue. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has repeatedly described the manner of compliance with Bill C-18 as a business choice for the Internet companies, yet the Prime Minister now calls that choice an attack on the country.

If it were truly comparable to a world war, then surely the Liberal Party (joined by the NDP) would not continue to advertise on the platform. Yet since the 2021 election call, the party alone has run approximately 11,000 ads on Facebook and Instagram. That is separate from individual MPs, who have also run hundreds of ads. The Meta Ad Library provides ample evidence of how reliant the party has been on social media. For example, since the start of the year, Anna Gainey ran over 500 ads as part of her by-election campaign in Quebec. David Hilderley, who was a candidate in the Oxford by-election, ran approximately 180 ads on Facebook during the same timeframe. 

Ultimately, if this is the government’s Plan B to the unfolding mess that is Bill C-18, it is unlikely to make much difference. Government advertising is supposed to be about department communication not subsidy and the suspension may make it harder to reach younger demographics on issues such as summer co-op programs or Canadian Armed Forces recruitment. Regardless, the ad boycott does not alter the foundation of the legislation of mandated payments for links with uncapped liability. Moreover, the costs extend beyond just Canada, as the companies are surely looking to the global market and the potential for billions in liability for linking if others adopt the Bill C-18 approach as their model. Viewed with that prism, a federal government ban that does not even include the governing political party pales in comparison to the risks of the dangerous Bill C-18 precedent.

As I have said for weeks, everyone loses with Bill C-18 and that includes Meta. But it is readily apparent that the Canadian media sector will take the biggest hit with lost links, cancelled deals, and a bill that may not generate any new revenues. The recent experience of the CBC’s Brodie Fenlon provides a vivid illustration of the harm to Canadian media outlets that awaits under Bill C-18. In fact, even if Google finds a compromise position – the government is clearly holding out hope it can strike a deal – the lost revenues from even one platform means this legislation may prove to be a net-negative for the media sector. That suggests that it will soon be time for Plan C, starting with a de-escalation of Prime Minister’s absurd rhetoric of a country under attack.


Editorial: Access to local news in Canada will be hurt

Greg Nikkel
2 days ago

Weyburn Review editor Greg Nikkel hopes that access to the free press in Canada will still be possible with Bill C-18 coming into effect.The Weyburn Review, like all community papers, will soon see all access to news removed from Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram), in reaction to Bill C-18 by the federal government.

The providers of news to local communities in Canada, including the Weyburn Review and other news organizations, are facing the loss of online availability of photos and stories to the public.

Recommended reads for you:
Google ready to remove links over Online News Act

This is a major blow for every news outlet, as once again the federal government is enacting legislation that benefits no one, and instead will severely impact the news industry, and will severely curtail the ability of the public to see the news stories about their community.

What is the reason for this major development? This is due to the federal government passing Bill C-18, known as ”The Online News Act.”

Through this act, which has not yet come into effect but will within the next six months, Google and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), will be required to pay news organizations for showing links to articles and photos.

The result is, both of those companies have announced that they will be removing all news content in Canada once this bill comes into effect.

This means that the news stories and photos you can currently look for and read on Facebook or through Google searches will no longer be available to you, the reader.

Google calls this payment a “link tax,” and they refuse to pay it, as will Meta. Their solution is to then deprive all Canadians of the access to current affairs, people stories, photos of news events and happenings in their community and in the world.

The ironic thing with the act is, the government explains that this legislation is in respect of online communications that provide news to the residents of Canada. The result of their bill is to effectively kill access to news in Canada, and they indicate no willingness to respond to the concerns of Google and Meta, not to mention the two companies are abandoning Canadians in response.

The Weyburn Review and This Week will continue to post news and photos from the community on our website, and as readers, you are encouraged to check that out and bookmark the site, as well as following us on Twitter.

The news continues to happen, and we will continue to report on the unfolding of our ongoing history, the accomplishments of residents, and the important events and occurrences for residents and businesses of the community.

In the meantime, people can communicate with the government, and with the two companies, to resolve this major disagreement. No one wins with this situation, and the ones who hold the means to walk back the bill is the governing party of Canada.

Both sides need to know this is hurting Canadians, and hurting the very basic right to a free press, which should never happen in a democratic country.

Justin Trudeau has come out swinging against social media. For a government that's come to rely on it, now what?

With the news that Trudeau’s government is ceasing all advertising on Facebook and Instagram, it appears that social media will soon be wistful for happier times, Susan Delacourt writes.


By Susan Delacourt
National Columnist
TORONTO STAR
Thu., July 6, 2023

Several years ago, legendary Washington Post editor Marty Baron came to Ottawa to speak at Carleton University about the future of journalism.

At a dinner later, Baron was talking about how he had little patience with journalists who kept lamenting how the old days were better. One of the guests, with his own illustrious career in print and TV journalism, replied: “Well they were pretty (expletive deleted) good.”

Journalists do love to tell stories about the good old days — guilty as charged. And yes, they were pretty good.

Now, with the news that Justin Trudeau’s government is ceasing all advertising on Facebook and Instagram, it appears that social media will soon be wistful for happier times. In just under a decade, the political class was whipped into a whirlwind, click-happy romance with the internet tech giants, only to denounce them this week as rich, greedy bullies.

The prime minister himself had fighting words for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, when he spoke to reporters in Quebec on Wednesday, especially when he spoke in French.

“They made a bad choice in attacking Canada,” Trudeau told reporters. “Canadians will not allow themselves to be intimidated or bullied by American billionaires who simply want to undermine our democracy.” Moreover, he added: “Canada will not be alone. I know that countries around the world are looking at what we’re doing here, and they will refuse to accept that kind of blackmail and those threats.”

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez cast the escalating tension with the tech giants as a battle against “superpowers,” and he didn’t mean it in a complimentary way. “They’re huge, they’re rich, powerful (with) lots of big lawyers. They can be intimidating,” Rodriguez said at his news conference announcing the ad ban. “But are we going to let ourselves be intimidated?”

Of course, as with many divorcing couples, the relationship between politics and social media won’t be totally severed — their paths will still cross; they may even need each other. But all one needs to do is look back over the past couple of decades of annual government advertising reports to see just how much that relationship blossomed in the internet era, and how much pulling back the government is going to be doing.

It was only six years ago, in the 2016-17 report, that the government reported for the first time that digital advertising had surpassed TV in the proportion of state money spent on ad campaigns. For decades, TV had dominated the ad spending — mainly at the expense of newspapers like this one — but at the same time Trudeau’s Liberals settled into their first year in power, digital advertising became king, racking up 54.7 per cent of all ad spending, and within that, social media represented 23 per cent.

Two years later, the annual ad report breaks down that spending even further, showing how much money went to the individual tech platforms, with flattering explanations for why the government was all into social media such as Facebook — not so much Twitter.

“Social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, represents the largest part of digital advertising placements this year,” the 2018-19 report states. “As of the fourth quarter of 2016, Facebook had a 75 per cent reach among Canadian internet users, equal to YouTube’s reach, and twice as high as that of Twitter’s. Further, Facebook allows for niche-targeting and it generally has high engagement rates. Twitter, on the other hand, is used more for ‘breaking news’ and has more limited targeting options.”

How big and how large was this leap into the world of advertising through social media? Well, back in 2006, when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives came to power, only six per cent of ad spending fell into what was then called the “web” category. By 2013, the “internet” ads claimed 20 per cent of all government ad spending, compared to just 10 per cent for weekly newspapers and a startlingly tiny 1.7 per cent for daily newspapers. (Yes, we were aware that Harper’s Conservatives weren’t all that into us, the daily print people.)

The most recent report, from 2021-22, shows a bit of a revival for so-called “traditional” media advertising, with 47 of the ad budget spent on TV, print and radio. In 2020-21, in fact, traditional media claimed a slightly larger share of all advertising, with 52 per cent over digital’s 47 per cent, but that is probably a result of all the public-health ads going to old-fashioned outlets in the COVID pandemic.

The point here is that Facebook and Instagram aren’t going to be bankrupted by the government’s ad ban — estimated to keep $10 million a year out of Meta’s hands — while the government has grown not only to love social media, but to need it too.

No question, though, social media is not the darling it once was, thanks to the disruptive Donald Trump and more recently, new Twitter owner Elon Musk. Now we have the threats from Meta and Google to limit their platforms to Canadian news, or cut them off altogether. As Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois were saying on Wednesday, now it’s about democracy and the future of journalism.

Last week, as this battle was escalating, I wondered whether citizens would side with the tech giants or the governments trying to rein them in. Neither is particularly popular with the public.

Trudeau’s latest language indicates he’s betting on antipathy to tech giants to keep him standing firm. But somewhere, maybe around the ping pong tables or beanbag chairs or other cool perks of those tech-giant offices, there may well be a glum gathering of people nostalgic for the good old days when everyone loved and needed them. Welcome to what it’s like to be a journalist.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt


The One Thing That Unites People on the Trump Indictments



Craig Ruttle/AP Photo

Not much unites the country when it comes to Donald Trump. And the public’s reaction to the former president’s two historic indictments has largely fallen along the kind of polarized partisan lines we might expect. But in one area, there’s something much closer to agreement.

According to a new poll commissioned by POLITICO Magazine and conducted by Ipsos, most Americans — including a large number of Republicans, who the former president is currently courting for his 2024 campaign — believe that the trial in the pending federal case against Trump for mishandling classified documents should occur before the GOP primaries and well before the general election.

Significant hurdles exist to such a speedy trial; this is an unprecedented set of circumstances within the legal system, with Trump not just a former president but the leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. But the results, both notable and surprising, could potentially push prosecutors and the presiding judge to move more quickly.

POLITICO Magazine commissioned this poll because we thought, despite some initial polling shortly after Trump’s federal indictment, that we could dig deeper into the public’s sentiment. How much do people really understand about the charges facing Trump and do they believe he’s guilty? What kind of punishments do they think fit the crimes if he is convicted? And, of course, what impact could all of this have on Trump’s presidential candidacy?

The poll was conducted from June 27 to June 28, roughly three weeks after Trump’s federal indictment and nearly three months after Trump was criminally charged by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. The poll had a sample of 1,005 adults age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points for all respondents.

At this point, roughly half of the country believes that Trump committed the crimes alleged against him.

Forty-nine percent of respondents — including 25 percent of Republicans — said that they believe Trump is guilty in the pending federal prosecution, which alleges that he willfully retained sensitive government documents after leaving office and obstructed a subsequent federal investigation. A nearly identical 48 percent of respondents — including 24 percent of Republicans — believe that Trump is guilty in the Manhattan DA’s pending prosecution, which alleges that Trump falsified business records in connection with a payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election in order to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual relationship between the two.

On the question of timing, however, there was more unity.


Nearly two-thirds of respondents (62 percent) said that the trial in the pending federal prosecution should take place before the presidential election next November — a figure that includes nearly half of Republican respondents (46 percent). A lower number, but a still-solid majority, said that the trial should take place before the Republican primaries begin early next year (57 percent of all respondents, including 42 percent of Republican respondents).

The findings could bolster the position of federal prosecutors, who have been pushing for a trial date as early as this December. Trump is expected to try to drag out the proceedings for as long as possible, particularly because he would likely be able to shut the prosecution down if reelected. But the federal statute that governs the setting of trial dates requires judges to account for not only the defendant’s interest but “the best interest of the public” as well.

What should happen to Trump if he gets convicted? Forty three percent said he should go to prison, but most were willing to spare him jail time. Nearly a quarter of respondents said that Trump should incur no punishment at all (22 percent), while 18 percent said he should receive probation and another 17 percent said he should face only a financial penalty.

The results were roughly similar when respondents were asked what the punishment should be if Trump is convicted in Manhattan. Most respondents said that Trump should not go to prison and that he should instead receive either no term of imprisonment, probation, or a financial penalty only (21 percent, 17 percent and 22 percent, respectively).

In both instances, a clear partisan breakdown was evident. For the DOJ case, 73 percent of Democrats thought Trump should go to prison if convicted, compared to 16 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of independents. For the Manhattan DA’s case, 65 percent of Democrats backed prison time, compared to 14 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of independents.

The results also complicate the post-indictment narrative that the charges have improved Trump’s chances of winning his party’s presidential nomination. It’s true that he’s gained support in the polls since the indictments, but our survey suggests that they haven’t fundamentally changed Republicans’ opinion of his campaign. While 21 percent of GOP respondents said the federal indictment on mishandling classified documents made them more likely to support Trump, 23 percent said it made them less likely; fully 50 percent said it had no impact and 6 percent said they didn’t know. The results were similar for the Manhattan DA’s indictment over the hush money payment.

Among the broader public, a conviction in either case would be damaging to Trump’s electoral chances. An identical number — 41 percent of all respondents — said that a conviction in either the federal case or the Manhattan DA’s case would make them less likely to support the former president. Despite all the commentary that he’s Teflon Don, it’s clear that some of his missteps can cost him.

The results also suggest that the numbers could get worse as Americans learn more about the pending charges. Roughly one-third of respondents said that they are not particularly familiar with the allegations in either case.

That number could decrease as media coverage continues, particularly in the run-up to potential trials. A trial date in the Manhattan DA’s case is currently set to begin on March 25, though it is conceivable that, as a practical matter, Trump could have the nomination locked up by then if dynamics in the GOP primary do not change. So far, most of his opponents have struggled to articulate a message that distinguishes themselves from Trump while appealing to a voter base that is largely sticking with him despite his mounting legal problems.

The public’s preference for a relatively speedy trial date in the federal prosecution against Trump could prove tricky to accommodate. Many legal observers are skeptical that a trial is possible next year, particularly given the complexities of a case that involves classified documents and a defendant who has historically proven adept at mounting aggressive delay strategies.

Indeed, according to the most recent statistics available, the median time from filing to disposition in felony cases in the Southern District of Florida, where the federal case against Trump is pending, is nine months. But that figure is almost surely dragged down by the fact that the significant majority of federal criminal cases are resolved by guilty pleas and that very few trials in the district, if any, have posed the sort of complexities that the first-ever criminal prosecution against a former U.S. president will pose, particularly involving classified information.

Still, if prosecutors and the presiding judge want to look to the law and satisfy the public’s interest, they can point to the results from this poll.
Trump posted what he said was Obama's address, prosecutors say. An armed man was soon arrested there


FILE - Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Federal prosecutors say Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and arrested last week near the home of former President Barack Obama, told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot” and that he was trying to locate the “tunnels underneath their houses” shortly before he was taken into custody by the Secret Service. 
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) 

ERIC TUCKER
Wed, July 5, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.

Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.

On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” That’s a reference to John Podesta, the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

Taranto also told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot,” prosecutors said.

A federal defender representing Taranto did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. But in a motion seeking to have him released pending trial, the lawyer wrote that Taranto was not a flight risk, had a family in Washington state and had served in Iraq before being honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy.

“Mr. Taranto has been available and in plain sight for the last two and a half years,” wrote the lawyer, Kathryn D’Adamo Guevara.

According to the Justice Department's detention memo, Taranto's wife told investigators that he had come to Washington this time because of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's offer earlier this year to produce unseen video of the Jan. 6 attack. Taranto already faces four misdemeanor counts related to the Capitol assault, when prosecutors say he joined the crush of rioters who broke into the building and made his way to the entrance of the Speaker's Lobby outside the House chamber.

Since then, prosecutors say, Taranto has been active online, posting a Facebook video of himself in the Capitol that day and endorsing a conspiracy theory that the death of Ashli Babbitt — who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she began to climb through the broken part of a door leading into the Speaker’s Lobby — was a hoax.

The FBI had been monitoring Taranto's online activities because of his involvement in the riot, and began searching for him last Wednesday after he asserted on his YouTube livestream that he was in Gaithersburg, Maryland on a “one-way mission” and intended to blow up the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The following day, he continued his livestream from the Washington neighborhood where Obama lives — an area heavily monitored by the U.S. Secret Service — and said that he was looking for “entrance points” and wanted to get a “good angle on a shot,” according to the detention memo.

Officials said he was spotted by law enforcement a few blocks from the former president’s home and fled, though he was chased by Secret Service officers.

_____

Follow Eric Tucker on http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
CORPORATE CENSORSHIP
GQ takes down article critical of Warner Bros. boss




Dominick Mastrangelo
Wed, July 5, 2023 at 9:53 AM PDT·1 min read

Men’s lifestyle and culture magazine GQ has pulled from its website an article that was critical of David Zaslav, the media titan and CEO at conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery.

The article, authored by freelance Hollywood film critic Jason Bailey, painted Zaslav in a negative light, referring to him at one point as “the most hated man in Hollywood.”

The article cited tensions between Hollywood film makers and members of the industry’s largest writers guild, which is currently on strike, and recent cuts the media company has made to Turner Classic Movies, which falls under the Warner Bros. Discovery umbrella.

WarnerBros. Discovery is also the parent company of CNN, and Zaslav was instrumental in the hiring and firing of the network’s former top executive Chris Licht.


After the article published on Monday, representatives for Zaslav pushed back on it. The publication then made a series of edits to the piece.

Bailey, the author of the article, told The Washington Post he requested to have his byline taken off the story after the edits had been made.

“I wrote what I felt was the story I was hired to write,” Bailey told the Post. “When I was asked to rewrite it after publication, I declined. The rewrite that was done was not to my satisfaction, so I asked to have my name removed and was told that the option there was to pull the article entirely, and I was fine with that.”

A representative for GQ did not immediately return a request for comment.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

 Entrepreneur behind chia pet craze dies at 91

 

Joseph Pedott, the entrepreneur behind the Chia Pet plant and light-switch gizmo The Clapper, died on June 22 at the age of 91. Remembered by longtime colleague Michael Hirsch as a businessman who was always 'fair and honest', Pedott turned the once money-losing Chia Pet product into a profitable business with cultural relevance.

Video Transcript

- The marketing mastermind behind the Chia Pet craze and the Clapper died this week at the age of 91. Joseph Pedott was a pro at selling products through unforgettable jingles. Turning the once money losing Chia Pet into a massive moneymaker and household name.

TV COMMENTATOR: There's a new pet. Chia. Chia Pet, the pottery that grows. It's fun and easy. Soak your Chia, spread the seeds, keep it watered, and watch it grow.

- And do is that catchy chit chit chit chit tune that helped the Chia Pet become one of America's best selling products of all time with more than 25 million sold in the US alone. Pedott's other hit product was the Clapper, first sold in 1985. And like the Chia Pet it was made memorable through catchy TV commercials.

- And commercials like that led to big sales. Now both of these products are archived in the Smithsonian and the Chia Pet is included in the New York Times time capsule to be opened in the year 3000. 

 

And it's evident from social media trends that Pedott's most famous products still resonates with younger generations. The Chia Pet hashtag has more than 491 million views on TikTok.

Mushroom-shaped superplume of scorching hot rock may be splitting Africa in 2


Charles Q. Choi
Wed, July 5, 2023 

landscape showing the east africa rift valley panorama from Ethiopia

A giant plume of super-heated rock rising up from near Earth's core could help explain mysterious distortions linked with a giant tear in the planet's surface that appears to be splitting Africa in two, a recent study finds.

Across the planet, huge gashes in Earth's surface known as continental rifts are ripping landmasses apart. The largest active continental rift is the East African Rift, a network of valleys that is about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) long, stretching from the Red Sea to Mozambique.

Continental rifting is driven by the deformation of the lithosphere, the planet's outermost rigid layer. As the lithosphere stretches thin, its shallowest parts can distort in a variety of ways, from pulling apart like dough to shattering.

Study co-author D. Sarah Stamps, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, likens these responses to Silly Putty — if you hit Silly Putty with a hammer, it can crack and break, but if you slowly pull it apart, it stretches. Over different time scales, Earth's lithosphere can also behave in different ways.

The direction in which Earth's surface deforms at continental rifts is usually at right angles to the length of a rift — imagine two halves of a continent pulling apart, with land stretching or breaking where those halves meet.

Related: Scientists extract a kilometer of rock from Earth's mantle in record-breaking mission

After examining the East African Rift for more than 12 years, the researchers found that deformation is perpendicular — as expected — moving east and west. However, they also discovered deformation parallel to the rift, moving north. These surface motions "are quite unusual and have not been observed elsewhere," Stamps told Live Science.


a satellite map showing africa

In the study, the team found that a giant, mushroom-shaped "superplume" of scorching-hot, buoyant rock ascending up Earth's mantle may help explain these mysterious distortions.

"This work suggests plumes may play an active role in deforming the Earth’s surface, particularly in continental rifts where the lithosphere has thinned," Stamps said.

Scientists have long known of mantle plumes on Earth. For example, Iceland and the island chains of Hawaii and the Galapagos formed as tectonic plates slowly drifted over mantle plumes, which seared overlying material like a blowtorch.

The researchers focused on the African Superplume, which rises beneath southwest Africa and goes northeast across the continent, becoming shallower as it extends northward.

The scientists used GPS technology to monitor surface motions at the East African Rift with millimeter precision. They also used seismic instruments to analyze the directions in which mantle rock slowly flowed over a broad area.

Finally, 3D computer simulations developed by study lead author Tahiry Rajaonarison, a geophysicist at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, analyzed the GPS and seismic data to work out the underground activity underlying the East African Rift.

The 3D models showed that the unusual deformations parallel to the rift may be driven by northward mantle flow associated with the African Superplume.

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"Imagine a stronger Silly Putty on top of a weaker Silly Putty, which represent the highly viscous lithosphere and the less viscous plume material, respectively," Rajaonarison told Live Science. "If you move the weaker Silly Putty, it will progressively stick together with the stronger Silly Putty at their interface until the stronger Silly Putty moves in the same direction."

All in all, "for me the most important implication of these findings is the improvement of our understanding of how continents breakup," Rajaonarison said.

The scientists published their findings March 27 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
FRANKENFOOD
EU moves toward latest gene techniques in food production to counter climate change, shortages


European Commissioner for European Green Deal Frans Timmermans speaks during a media conference on threats of climate change and environmental degradation on peace, security, and defense at EU headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, June 28, 2023. The European Union took a novel step Wednesday, July 5, 2023 to adapt its food production to the new ways of the world, proposing to embrace the latest gene techniques that it hopes will help counter global challenges like climate change and shortages while still keep nature and consumers safe. 
(AP Photo/Virginia Mayo File)


RAF CASERT
Wed, July 5, 2023

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union took a step Wednesday toward adapting its food production to the new ways of the world: The 27-nation bloc wants to embrace the latest gene techniques it hopes will help safely counter global challenges like climate change and shortages.

For decades, the EU was conservative in allowing the use of genetically modified organisms — which often brought up connotations of Frankenfood rather than improved crop production — while the United States and others quickly adopted the new bioengineered technologies.

However, the EU's executive commission on Wednesday threw its weight behind so-called new genomic techniques, which seek to change organisms in a much less intrusive way than the GMOs of old, and to allow many to be sold without special labeling.

“In many ways, new genomic techniques can give you the same results as through conventional and natural selection, or through targeted crossbreeding, but with much more speed, precision and efficiency,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said.

The new techniques are intended to make plants better able to withstand drought while requiring fewer pesticides and to create products with better color and more consistency that are more attractive to consumers.

Unsurprisingly, large farming companies welcomed the EU's plans and environmentalists mounted opposition. Wednesday's proposal is only the start of a drawn-out process since member nations and the European Parliament must endorse the plans before they can become reality.

The bloc's current GMO legislation dates back to 2001 after the issue divided the EU for a generation. It gave environmentalists the assurance that the EU wouldn’t become a free-for-all for multinational agro-corporations to produce GMOs in bulk and sell products to the bloc’s 450 million citizens without detailed labeling and warnings.

The EU's main farm lobby, Copa-Cogeca, was jubilant Wednesday. “After more than a decade of postponements, the European Commission has finally presented a proposal,” it said in a statement.

Environmentalists are fully alarmed again, fearing that the newest tools still pose too many dangers and must undergo much better testing.

“Whether it’s a toy or a face cream, any product on the market needs to be safety tested. Why would there be an exemption for GMOs that end up in our fields or on our plates,” said Eva Corral of Greenpeace. "Biotech companies have long considered these safety procedures an unnecessary bother and it’s disappointing to see the commission agree with them.”

Timmermans disagreed with that assessment and said his proposal put caution front and center. When it is clear that plants based on new genomic techniques could occur naturally or by conventional breeding, they would be treated like conventional plants, he said. Others would still face the much stricter GMO requirements before they could be introduced.

The European People's Party, the biggest in the EU legislature, has welcomed the plans.

If done right, the proposal will ensure European competitiveness, lower emissions and more food globally, European Parliament member Jessica Polfjärd. said.

"Everybody should be able to support those objectives,” she said.



UK, Canada, Sweden, Ukraine take Iran to top UN court over 2020 downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet



Bodies of the victims of a Ukrainian plane crash are collected by rescue team at the scene of the crash in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. The United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine launched a case against Iran at the United Nations' highest court Wednesday, July 5, 2023, over the downing in 2020 of a Ukrainian passenger jet and the deaths of all 176 passengers and crew. 
(AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

MIKE CORDER
Wed, July 5, 2023 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine launched a case against Iran at the United Nations' highest court Wednesday over the downing in 2020 of a Ukrainian passenger jet and the deaths of all 176 passengers and crew.

The four countries want the International Court of Justice to rule that Iran illegally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines plane and to order Tehran to apologize and pay compensation to the families of the victims.

Flight PS752 was traveling from Tehran to Kyiv on Jan. 8, 2020 when it was shot down soon after takeoff. The people killed included nationals and residents of Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, as well as Afghanistan and Iran. Their ages ranged from 1 year to 74 years old.

“Today’s legal action reflects our unwavering commitment to achieving transparency, justice and accountability for the families of the victims,” the countries said in a joint statement Wednesday. They said they filed the case after Iran failed to respond to a December request for arbitration.

Following three days of denials in In January 2020, Iran said its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly downed the Ukrainian plane with two surface-to-air missiles. Iranian authorities blamed an air defense operator who they said mistook the Boeing 737-800 for an American cruise missile.

An Iranian court this year sentenced an air defense commander allegedly responsible for the downing to 13 years imprisonment, according to the country’s official judiciary news outlet.

But the countries that filed the case with the world court in The Hague called the prosecution "a sham and opaque trial."

According to the court filing published Wednesday, the U.K., Canada, Sweden and Ukraine argue that Iran “failed to take all practicable measures to prevent the unlawful and intentional commission of an offense” and “failed to conduct an impartial, transparent, and fair criminal investigation and prosecution consistent with international law.”

The filing alleges that Iran withheld or destroyed evidence, blamed other countries and low level Revolutionary Guard personnel, “threatened and harassed the families of the victims seeking justice" and failed to report details of the incident to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The downing happened on the same day Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.

Last week, Iran filed a case against Canada linked to the downing, accusing the North American nation of flouting state immunity in allowing relatives of terrorism victims to seek reparations from the Islamic Republic.
SPACE WEATHER
Sunspot numbers hit 20-year high, indicating the sun is fast approaching its explosive peak


Harry Baker
LIVE SCIENCE
Wed, July 5, 2023 

The sun covered in hundreds of sunspots in a time-lapse image of June

The sun is partying like it's 2002. The number of observed sunspots on our home star last month was the highest for almost 21 years. It's one of the clearest signs yet we are fast approaching the sun's chaotic peak, known as solar maximum — and that it will be far more extreme than initially predicted.

In June, 163 sunspots appeared on the solar surface, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. The last time this many dark patches littered the sun was in September 2002, when 187 sunspots were observed.

Scientists pay particularly close attention to the number of sunspots because it is the easiest way to track changes in solar activity during the sun's roughly 11-year solar cycle. The dark patches are caused by the sun's magnetic field poking through the solar surface, which only happens as the field becomes increasingly tangled up with itself as the solar cycle progresses, before eventually flipping completely to kickstart the next cycle.

At the start of each solar cycle when the sun is at its calmest, known as solar minimum, there are almost no sunspots at all. But as the sun approaches solar maximum the number of dark spots sharply rises until the star is covered with them and they begin to spit out increasingly frequent and powerful solar flares.

Related: 10 signs the sun is gearing up for its explosive peak — the solar maximum

The current solar cycle — the 25th scientists have recorded — officially began in December 2019. At the time, scientists predicted the cycle would peak in 2025 and be similar in intensity to the previous cycle, which was meager compared with other cycles on record. However, as Solar Cycle 25 has progressed it has shown signs that it's far more active than those initial predictions suggested, and experts now believe the upcoming maximum could arrive early and be much more powerful than the last one.
Solar cycle progression

For the last 28 months in a row, the number of observed sunspots has been higher than the predicted values from the initial solar cycle forecasts. For example, the predicted number for June was only 77, which is less than half the actual number of sunspots. And in December 2022, sunspot numbers hit an eight-year high.


Thousands of sunspots cover the sun in a time-lapse image for the first six months of 2023

June's sunspot count was greater than any month during the last solar maximum, which suggests the upcoming peak will be much more active. The current trend is more in line with Solar Cycle 23, which peaked between 2000 and 2001. During that solar maximum, the highest sunspot count was 244, recorded in July 2000.

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On June 29 this year, a sunspot that had only appeared 48 hours earlier rapidly swelled into a behemoth that was around 10 times wider than Earth, making it one of the largest sunspots of Solar Cycle 25. On July 2, this gigantic dark patch spat out an X-class solar flare (the strongest type the sun can produce), which slammed directly into Earth and caused radio blackouts in the western U.S. and eastern Pacific Ocean. This is another telltale sign that solar maximum is fast approaching and will be more extreme than expected.

But sunspots aren't the only indicator the upcoming maximum will be stronger than the last. In March, the thermosphere — the second-highest layer of Earth's atmosphere — reached its highest temperature for almost 20 years after soaking up excess energy from solar storms that hit our planet in early 2023.


Powerful ‘X-class’ solar flare from rapidly growing sunspot triggers radio blackout in US



Vishwam Sankaran
Tue, July 4, 2023 

A powerful solar flare from a fast-growing sunspot on the Sun’s surface triggered radio blackouts in some parts of the US.

The giant sunspot, named AR3354, was first spotted on the Sun on June 27 and grew rapidly within a span of two days to a size about 10 times larger than Earth, raising concerns among space weather scientists.

This sunspot first produced a minor M-class flare on 29 June and, after a brief period of calm, unleashed an X-class flare – the most powerful category of solar flare the Sun can belch out – aimed directly at Earth.

Solar flares are giant explosions on the Sun’s surface that send out charged particles and energy into space at high speeds. They are categorised as either A, B, C, M or X, with each successive letter representing a 10-fold increase in energy output.

“When this week began, sunspot AR3354 didn’t exist. Now it is 10 times wider than Earth and still growing. The sunspot burst into view on June 27th, breaching the surface of the sun, then blossoming into a giant over the next 48 hours,” noted Spaceweather.com.

The sunspot is so big that amateur astronomers are able to observe it and see details that are normally found by the world’s greatest telescopes.

The US federal body National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center reported a “strong radio blackout” in parts of the US on Sunday.

“The flare came from a large and complex region denoted as sunspot group 3354,” NOAA said, adding that it led to a “temporary degradation or complete loss of High Frequency (HF) radio signals” on some of the sunlit sides of Earth.

Some of the biggest X-class solar flares to hit Earth have led to long-lasting radiation storms, which can potentially harm satellites, communications systems and even power grids.

The solar storm on Sunday led to brief radio blackouts lasting for about 30 minutes in the western US and parts of the eastern Pacific Ocean, according to NOAA.

The flare peaked in intensity at 7.14pm ET on 2 July, Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory said in a statement.

However, experts said if the flare had launched along with it fast-moving charged particles, in what’s called a coronal mass ejection (CME), it might have led to an even larger radio blackout.

The sunspot AR3354 has not yet shrunk in size and may still belch out more solar flares in the coming days.

Flares and CMEs are produced by the snapping and reconnection of the Sun’s magnetic field lines, often at sunspots.

The appearance of more frequent sunspots as well as larger ones is a sign of the Sun nearing Solar Maximum – the most active time of the Sun’s 11-year cycle – experts said.