Australia logging ban to create koala haven

Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2023,

Koala numbers are threatened by deforestation, drought and bushfires 

(William WEST/AFP)

Australia's most populous state announced Tuesday a logging ban in a forest haven for koalas, aiming to protect the local population from being wiped out.

Logging has been halted in 8,400 hectares (21,000 acres) of forest, home to 106 "koala hubs" that are highly populated by the marsupials, the New South Wales government said.

The koala-rich area would form a key part of a planned 315,000-hectare Great Koala National Park on the mid-north coast and "save koalas from extinction in the state", it said.

The move was a "historic step forward", said Nature Conservation Council acting chief executive Brad Smith, describing the area as "the most important koala habitat in the world".

"This decision is also a recognition that logging has a devastating impact on koalas and biodiversity," he added.

WWF-Australia spokesman Dr Stuart Blanch said koala numbers in NSW had suffered a dramatic decline, falling by more than 50 percent between 2000 and 2020 due to deforestation, drought and bushfires.

The government's move "is a chance to turn this tragedy around", he said.

"If we're going to save koalas from extinction this century, then we need massive new protected areas covering millions of hectares of forests."

But Greens spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson criticized the move as "a gift to the timber industry".

She said 58 percent of the proposed park area's koala population would be left unprotected by the logging ban, adding: "Logging is likely to continue throughout the area of the Great Koala National Park through to 2025 due to the long reporting timeline that the government has set for itself.

"The government needs to do the work now to begin the transition of the public native forest industry before it's too late for koalas and too late for the other previous forest-dependent species."

The state government said it would soon begin consultations with state-owned logging agency Forestry Corporation NSW to "determine timber supply options".

California firefighters use AI to battle wildfires

Agence France-Presse
September 12, 2023,

FILE PHOTO: Firefighters battle a fast-moving wildfire that destroyed homes driven by strong wind and high temperatures forcing thousands of residents to evacuate in Goleta, California, U.S., early July 7, 2018. REUTERS/Gene Blevins


When a wildfire erupted in the middle of a recent California night, it could have been a disaster.

But thanks to a new monitoring system that uses artificial intelligence to scan for danger, firefighters were able to quell the blaze long before it got out of hand.

"It was less than a quarter acre," Captain Kris Yeary of Cal Fire told AFP.

"Had the AI not alerted us to it, it could have gotten much bigger."

Yeary, who is responsible for organizing firefighting over an area that includes Mount Laguna, around 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of San Diego, sprang into action around 3am on August 5 after a call from colleagues at a command center.

Computers watching live feeds from the Cleveland National Forest spotted what their algorithm had been taught to understand was a column of smoke.

Human operators were able to verify the machines were correct and alerted Yeary, whose firefighters quickly extinguished the flames.

"It could have been a devastating fire," he said.

- Artificial intelligence -

Artificial intelligence is a rapidly developing field of computing that seeks to mimic human abilities to "think."

Unlike a traditional computer, which can only produce answers based on the concrete information it has, AI can infer answers, using experience it has gained from similar problems it has seen before -- similar to a human being.

Over the last few years, its application has spread to include areas as diverse as weather forecasting, stock-picking, art and journalism.

That has brought with it worries from people who fear it will do them out of their jobs -- the writers' and actors' strike currently paralyzing Hollywood is in part about the use of AI in films and television.

But firefighters battling California's wildfires say they will take all the help they can get.

"AI is just another tool for us," said Yeary. "It's never going to replace firefighters."

- Promising results -


California experiences thousands of fires every year, which torch hundreds of thousands -- sometimes millions -- of acres (hectares).

Over the last decade, blazes have claimed more than 200 lives, and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, wreaking billions of dollars of damage.

For several years firefighters have used a network of more than 1,000 cameras to monitor possible fire hotspots.

Since the end of June, the ALERTCalifornia system has had AI computers "watching" these feeds, and flagging to human operators when they see wisps of smoke that could be a fire -- with promising results.

"Our success metric is the fires you never hear about," says Neal Driscoll, who heads the project for the University of California San Diego.

"We beat 911 calls about 40 percent of the time. And it's going to get better."

The addition of AI has meant each firefighter watching the dozens of feeds they are responsible for now has a helping hand.

When the software believes it detects smoke, it displays a small red rectangle on the screen, and offers a percentage indicating its degree of certainty.

It is then up to the operator to confirm the seriousness of the alert -- and weed out any confusion.

Currently, the system can erroneously flag dust raised by tractors, insects in front of the camera or even a bit of fog.

"When a cloud will go over... it can cast a shadow on the ground and sometimes (the computer) can actually think that that's possibly smoke," says Suzann Leininger, an intelligence specialist at Cal Fire.

The feedback that experts like Leininger give -- no, that's just a bit of weather -- is helping the AI to get better at what it does.

But even in its current state, it's a boon.

"It's getting us time to react in a faster manner," says Leininger.

And when you're talking about fire, time can be everything.


- Climate change -

As California grapples with the effects of human-caused climate change, fires are becoming bigger and more destructive.

The state has experienced 18 of its 20 largest wildfires on record in the last two decades.

With terrifying blazes ripping through Europe, Canada and Hawaii this year, the devastating impact of the changing climate is becoming ever-more apparent worldwide.

"I think that as we see these devastations in other areas, like in Greece, and Maui, that systems like this that provide early confirmation will be a step in the right direction," says Driscoll of UC San Diego.

Faced with the scale of the threat, the scientist has chosen to grant public access to the data on his platform, so that other companies or academics can work on it.

"We need to leverage all of our assets and work together, because extreme climate is bigger than any one of us."

GERIATRICOGRACY 
Dementia risk among aging politicians poses national security risk: Pentagon study

Sky Palma
September 12, 2023

(Photo by Saul Loeb for AFP)

A Pentagon-funded think tank released a report that says the potential for dementia among aging politicians is a national security risk, The Intercept reported.

The report comes as bipartisan concerns increase around the advanced age of politicians such as GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein – and even President Joe Biden and potential GOP nominee Donald Trump.

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.”

As The Intercept points out, The U.S.’s current leadership is the oldest in history.

Read the full report over at The Intercept.

Most New Yorkers say they support American dream, but many OK with ending immigration, poll says

2023/09/12

Statue City Cruises, part of City Experiences, celebrates the Statue of Liberty's 136th birthday on Oct. 27, 2022, in New York City. -

 Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images North America/TNS

NEW YORK — A majority of New Yorkers say the U.S. should live out welcoming words etched on the Statue of Liberty, but almost a third say the country does not need to continue welcoming any new immigrants, according to a new poll released as the state struggles with the strain of the asylum-seeker crisis.

In the statewide Siena College survey, published Tuesday, the Statue of Liberty exhortation — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — received support from 69% of voters, with 21% opposed.

And a broad, bipartisan majority of New Yorkers said assimilating immigrants into the American melting pot made the nation great, according to the poll. About as large a share of Republicans (77%) and Democrats (83%) said assimilating arrivals made the country strong.

“There’s no doubt, the vast majority of New Yorkers recognize that our country was built by immigrants from virtually every nation around the globe and assimilating immigrants has made America great,” Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, said in a statement.

The poll offered the latest slate of public opinion data as ongoing waves of migration across America’s southwestern border strain New York City, which is caring for about 60,000 asylum seekers, according to government data.

But even as the survey showed robust recognition of immigrants’ roles building the country, it also suggested a wide swath of New Yorkers would be happy to see New York’s doors shut completely to the outside.

In the poll, 30% of respondents said the U.S. no longer needs new immigrants. And a slim majority of Republicans — 51% against 46% — said America does not need new immigrants. Perhaps paradoxically, a majority of Republicans also said the U.S. should continue to live out the words in the Statue of Liberty.

Only 22% of Democrats said the U.S. does not need new immigrants, the poll found.

Observers increasingly see the migrant crisis as a political hot potato, with the 2024 elections emerging on the horizon and the city opening more migrant shelters in neighborhoods across the five boroughs, sparking GOP angst.

Siena said it surveyed 800 New York residents last week for the poll.

© New York Daily News

 NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR!
Watch: Billionaire CEO says unemployment 'has to jump' to put 'arrogant' workers in their place
Brad Reed
September 12, 2023, 1:47 PM ET

Financial Review/X/Screengrab

An aggrieved billionaire this week lamented that workers had grown lazy and "arrogant" during the coronavirus pandemic and that many of them needed to be made unemployed for the situation to improve.

The Australian Financial Review reports that Tim Gurner, the founder and CEO of the Gurner Group, expressed dismay at the current state of his country's labor force.

"People decided that they didn't really want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity," he said. "They have been paid a lot to not do too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change."

Gurner then outlined just what such changes would entail.

"We need to see unemployment rise," he argued. "Unemployment has to jump 40 to 50 percent, in my view. We need to see some pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around... There's been a systemic change where the employees feel that the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."

Gurner then predicted that enacting massive layoffs would lead to "less arrogance in the employment market."

Watch the video below or at this link.

'Obscene': Clean Up Alabama wants state to dump 'Marxist' American Library Association

WHAT'S WRONG WITH MARXISM?

raymond-williams-marxism-and-literature.pdf

WordPress.com

https://mykelandrada.files.wordpress.com › ray...

Marxism and Literature realized. in its full implications. Hardly anyone becomes a Marxist for primarily cultural or literary reasons, but for compelling.

113 pages

The historical novel : Lukács, György, 1885-1971

Internet Archive

https://archive.org › details › historicalnovel00luka

Mar 5, 2012 — The historical novel. by: Lukács, György, 1885-1971. Publication date: 1963. Topics: Historical fiction. Publisher: Boston, Beacon Press.

PS THE ALA IS NOT MARXIST

Image via mattomedia KG/Shutterstock.

Matt Keelyand
The New Civil Rights Movement

September 13, 2023

The latest group to try to block books on queer topics from children, Clean Up Alabama, is trying to reform the state’s library system. One of its goals is for Alabama to “End our association, participation, and use of the far left marxist organization that is the American Library Association,” according to its website.

The group started earlier this year as Clean Up Prattville, according to LGBTQ Nation, focusing specifically on the Autauga-Prattville Public Library. Clean Up Alabama says on its website that “many Alabama libraries have been stocking their shelves with books intended to confuse the children of our communities about sexuality and expose them to material that is inappropriate for them.”

Clean Up Alabama says its mission is to remove “pornographic, obscene, and indecent books” from children’s sections of the libraries. One of its major goals is a withdrawal from the ALA—claiming on its site that the “ALA believes that children should be able to view pornography in the name of freedom of expression.”

READ MORE: Texas County to Consider Shutting Down Library After Judge Orders Books With LGBTQ and Racial Content Returned to Shelves

While the ALA does fight for readers to be able to access whatever books they want, the books Clean Up Alabama wants banned are not “pornographic.” The Clean Up Prattville site includes a list of books the organization objects to, along with excerpts from the books. For example, Looking for Alaska by John Green is on the list. One of the offending excerpts follows:

…I’m in the middle of a sentence about analogies or something and like a hawk he reaches down and he honks my boob. HONK. A much-too-firm, two- to three-second HONK. And the first thing I thought was Okay, how do I extricate this claw from my boob before it leaves permanent marks?…”

Nick and Charlie by Heartstopper author Alice Oseman—about a young gay couple—is also on the list. The included excerpt has a scene where the titular characters have sex, but this is the most explicit it gets:
I can’t think about anything else when he’s running his hands so gently through my hair, across my back, over my hips. I ask if we should take our clothes of and he’s saying yes before I’ve even finished ay sentence, and then he’s pulling my T-shirt off and laughing when I can’t undo his shirt buttons, he’s undoing my belt, I’m reaching into his bedside drawer for a condom, we’re kissing again, we’re rolling over obviously you can see where this is going.

Though there’s a petition on Clean Up Alabama’s site calling for the ALA withdrawal, the Alabama Political Reporter reports the group wants to change the state’s anti-obscenity law to remove an exemption for libraries. If the group gets its way, librarians could face a year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000 for providing books deemed “harmful” to minors.

Clean Up Alabama has allies among some state Republicans. Representatives Susan Dubose, Rick Rehm and Bill Lamb have supported the group’s efforts to withdraw from the ALA, according to the Political Reporter. Representatives Ernie Yarbrough, Mack Butler and House Majority Leader Scott Stadthagen also have supported the group. Governor Kay Ivey sent the Alabama Public Library Service a letter echoing Clean Up America’s complaints, though the letter does not directly refer to the group, according to the Political Reporter.

On September 5, Clean Up Prattville proposed to the city council that the group take control of the public library via a service contract. The proposal was rejected in a 4-3 vote, according to AL.com. The local library director, Andrew Foster, told AL.com that the group’s campaign started over one book, The Pronoun Book, a book directed at children up to 3 years old explaining what pronouns are.

“There was an incident where a family checked out a book called the ‘Pronoun Book’, took it home before realizing it was an inclusive pronoun book, that it wasn’t just binary, he and she, but instead had some other representations in the book,” he told the outlet.

BC

TOOK LONG ENOUGH💩💩💩
Poop bags are now available at rock climbing sites in Squamish and nope, they're not for your pets

Story by Rafferty Baker • CBC

There's no delicate way to describe a new program launched for rock climbers in B.C.'s Squamish area, meant to reduce human waste being deposited in the forest.

About 64 kilometres north of Vancouver — around the halfway point to Whistler — organizers are providing bags for climbers to poop into, seal up, and pack out of the wilderness to dispose of appropriately.

The Waste Alleviating Gel (WAG) bag program has been set up by the Squamish Access Society (SAS) in partnership with B.C. Parks, and sponsored by businesses in the climbing industry.

"There's been an explosion in the usage of our backcountry areas in southwest B.C. and the sea-to-sky corridor, and rock climbing is very much a part of that," said Ben Webster, SAS chair.

"Increasingly we are finding that there are issues with human waste, particularly in our more remote crags."


A Waste Alleviating Gel (WAG) bag is a robust bag with powder inside that will turn liquid into gel. It's meant to be used as portable, single-use toilet in the wilderness or other situations where facilities aren't available. (Ben Webster/Squamish Access Society)© Provided by cbc.ca

Webster said it's usually dogs who find the waste in the forest around the base of popular cliffs frequented by climbers, but sometimes it's found by people — and in very rare, but "absolutely awful" occasions, a climber will reach a small ledge part of the way up a cliff to find someone has relieved themselves there.

Two stores that sell climbing equipment in Squamish, Valhalla Pure and Climb On, have contributed to the program as sponsors, and B.C. Parks has funded the WAG bag stations within its parks.


Katy Holm, one of the owners of Climb On, was careful not to blame the rock climbing community for the general issue with human waste in the Squamish area, saying much of it is associated with people camping or living in their vehicles, and the broader recreational popularity of the region.

"I don't think it is acutely an issue at crags," said Holm, though the program is limited to distributing the bags at crags, or cliffs with climbing routes.

Holm said using the bags is common practice at many rock climbing destinations in the U.S., especially places in deserts.

"Climbers are most certainly familiar with this," she said. "Those that have travelled won't see it as something new, but I'm sure others will have challenges adopting."

She said the bags aren't anything like the flimsy little bags people use to pick up their pets' poop.

"It's totally robust. You don't have a fear that it's going to explode or anything. You can roll it up, there's no smell. It doesn't feel dirty at all," said Holm.

Webster agreed that for some people in the climbing community in B.C., it will be a paradigm shift to start pooping into bags and hauling it out of the forest.

He said five stations have already been set up at crags, with four more expected to be ready in the next two weeks, and the stations have already required restocking — something that was expected, as people grab a WAG bag to throw in their pack for whenever it's required.

"We are excited for people to grab them, use them and maybe people will be brave enough to tell their friends they've been using them, because that will get the word out there," said Webster.


A sign on a Waste Alleviating Gel (WAG) bag station details the steps required to use the bags to poop in the wilderness without leaving a trace: take a bag, poop into it, pack it out of the woods and dispose of it in a garbage bin. (Emilisa Frirdich/Squamish Access Society)© Provided by cbc.ca

Gripped.com

https://gripped.com/news/three-ways-to-deal-with-poop-and-rock-climbing

Three Ways to Deal with Poop and Rock Climbing - Gripped Mag... 

May 1, 2021 ... Don't “go” in the bag, but on the ground and then poop-and-scoop it into the bag. Bags are often the most recommended form of waste disposal, as ...

BC

‘Pile of lumber’: Kootenay Lake shipwreck explored by humans for 1st time since 1997

By Elizabeth McSheffrey Global News
Posted September 12, 2023

 One hundred and twenty-five years ago, nine people died during the sinking of a sternwheeler ship in Kootenay Lake. It took almost a century before the vessel's wreckage was found. Catherine Urquhart reports.

A team of scuba divers from B.C. and Alberta have “relocated” a historic shipwreck in Kootenay Lake and explored it, finding a significant amount of structural collapse since the last expedition.

The 25-metre sternwheeler called the City of Ainsworth sunk in a storm on Nov. 29, 1898. Nine people were killed in what the BC Heritage Branch describes as the “largest maritime disaster” in the history of the province’s inland lakes.

The vessel’s whereabouts were unknown until 1990, when it was found at a depth of 110 metres. A dive team explored the wreckage in 1997, but since then, only submersibles have made the venture.

“We’ve been planning this for at least five years, and this year, it finally all came together,” said Brian Nadwidny, a lead diver on the most recent expedition, which took place between Aug. 28 and Sept. 2.
“People ask me, was I excited when I first saw the wreck? And all I could think when I first saw it was, ‘OK, it’s time to get to work.'”

To dive to depths as deep as the wreckage of the City of Ainsworth requires special training. When the first dive team went down in 1997, it was the deepest scuba dive to a shipwreck in Canadian history at the time.

It took 10 years to assemble the gear and a team with enough qualified divers, Nadwidny told Global News. In the end, seven people, including surface support, ventured out into Kootenay Lake.

The scuba divers went down in pairs three times, with each dive limited to 10 minutes in length. The first time, Nadwidny said he and his partner saw nothing but mud, with their shot line roughly 30 feet away from their target.

“We repositioned the shot line,” he said. “I went down two days later with Johnny Ryan and I got some more footage of it.

“With it only being 10 minutes, we really didn’t have a lot of time to look at the wreck as a whole. It was basically hit the ground and start filming and shooting pictures right away.”

The bottom of Kootenay Lake is especially muddy, Nadwidny added, so divers had to take extra care not to land on its floor and stir up the dirt, obscuring visibility.

Over the course of their dives, the team found that the wreckage had “deteriorated significantly” from 1997, with the upper deck now totally collapsed and the main deck collapsed on the starboard side.

The wheelhouse is still there, but Nadwidny described the City of Ainsworth as “mostly a pile of lumber.”

“The only thing really left standing is the wall on the port side with a door and a window, and of course, the paddle wheel’s intact as well,” he said. “Also still standing at the bow is the flagpole and the capstan.”

Few artifacts were found, he added, apart from a work bench with a vice on it and a bell near the rear of the ship in the machinery area. Nadwidny said it once had a line attached to it that led to the wheelhouse, which the captain would pull when he wanted to go faster or slower.

According to the BC Heritage Branch, the City of Ainsworth is considered a “significant example” of advanced late-19th century marine technology. Its paddlewheel, which has offset bucket planks meant to reduce vibration, is the only one of its kind documented in the province.

The vessel was built in 1892 in the mining town of Ainsworth and was part of a transportation network that carried freight and passengers to communities along Kootenay Lake, and as far away as Bonners Ferry in Idaho.

Nadwidny said he’s been dreaming of diving to the City of Ainsworth for more than a decade. He, and everyone else on the team, all want to go back for another venture next year to collect more invaluable footage.

“What we’re going to do next time is we’re going to focus more on certain areas rather than just trying to shoot the whole thing in 10 minutes,” he said.

“We plan to go next year and focus on maybe, just the bow for the one dive, or maybe just the midships for the one dive, maybe just the wheelhouse for one dive. That way, after we do about five or six dives on it, we’ll get a better idea of what the state of things are exactly and have a better record for future people to look at.”

After the dives were complete, the team of seven laid flowers in the water in honour of the lives lost on the vessel.

Johnny Ryan, Glenn Farquhar and Alan Drake were on the dive team with Nadwidny, and John McCuaig, Cathie McCuiag and Terina Hancock made up the surface support team.

“Everybody had an equal part in getting this done. This is not a dive that’s done easily,” said Nadwidny.

Kootenay Lake

Kootenay Lake is a lake located in British Columbia, Canada. It is part of the Kootenay River. The lake has been raised by the Corra Linn Dam and has a dike system at the southern end, which, along with industry in the 1950s–70s, has changed the ecosystem in and around the water. The Kootenay Lake f... Wikipedia

Two years after escaping Kabul, evacuees find joy among the struggle of life in Canada

Story by Bryan Passifiume • NATIONAL POST

The Rahimi family (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) Zahara (DAUGHTER), Farida (MOTHER) Omar (SON BEING HELD) by Ahmad Rahimi (FATHER), Marwa (DAUGHTER), Iqra (DAUGHTER) and Ahmad Fakher (SON) at their Mississauga home, who escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan where he was a security head for Canada’s embassy in Kabul.© Provided by National Post

When Canada put out the call for help during their 14-year mission in Afghanistan, Ahmad Ferdaws Rahimi was among the thousands of Afghan nationals who lent a hand.

And when Canada announced their limited efforts to evacuate them ahead of the Taliban’s surprise 2021 return, he was among those left behind.

Now living in Mississauga, the story of the Rahimi’s escape from Kabul highlights the problems with Canada’s lamentable evacuation of its people from the country, but also the importance of maintaining hope.

“We are so happy because we are here, we are safe,” he told the National Post.

“In Afghanistan it was big trouble for us, especially for me, because I was working with foreigners.”

Local interpreters, security personnel and embassy workers were the unsung heroes of Canada’s 14-year Afghanistan mission.

Rahimi served as a watch commander for contracted security forces at Canada’s diplomatic mission in Kabul, acted as an adviser to the Canadian Forces’ Operation ARGUS advisory team, and performed security work for the Germans at their embassy.

He also managed security for Afghanistan’s largest private airline, Kam Air.

Those jobs landed Rahimi on a Taliban hit list, culminating in a 2019 attempt on his life involving armed gunmen opening fire as he stopped to buy food on his way home from work.



ID card for Ahmad Rahimi when he was employed at Canada’s embassy in Kabul.© Courtesy Ahmad Rahimi

As the Taliban continued their march towards Kabul during the summer of 2021, members of the sect reportedly conducted door-to-door searches for those who gave aid to the allies.

That prompted Rahimi to start seeking an exit plan — and he turned to Canada for help.

Instead of freedom, Rahimi, wife Farida, and their five children found themselves among the hundreds of would-be evacuees who found themselves mired in the bureaucracy of both Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) — waiting for one final email that would’ve secured space on one of the evacuation flights Canada and allies were staging at Kabul’s besieged airport.

While nations such as the U.K. and Germany ran armed patrols to evacuate their citizens and workers using helicopters and even European-plated buses to move people into the airport, Global Affairs Canada told evacuees to “wear red clothing” and present themselves to officials at a hotel on the airport’s perimeter.

Word of these directives made their way to the Taliban, who reportedly unleashed beatings at anybody who showed up at the gate wearing red clothing.

Those who did make it to the airport’s notorious north gate were turned away by both Afghan and Canadian soldiers — even those with valid documents allowing them passage on Canadian flights.

Rahimi’s email from Global Affairs never arrived, leaving the family to fend for themselves.

He was comforting his then-baby son Omar when they were accosted by a Taliban thug, calling him a “foreign servant” before unleashing a brutal beating.

“I tried to put myself between him and my wife and children,” Rahimi told the Toronto Sun from Kabul in 2021.

Related video: Afghan interpreter shares long struggle to bring his family to Canada (cbc.ca)

Duration 2:01  View on Watch

“If I had allowed, he would have killed us.”


Four of Ahmad Rahimi’s five children in the back of an Royal Air Force A-400 cargo plane, just arrived in Dubai from Kabul, on Aug. 21 2021.© Courtesy Ahmad Ferdas Rahimi

This was witnessed by a passing Royal Air Force officer, who took pity on the family and ushered them through the gate.

Rahimi’s previous work for a U.K. contractor was enough to get his family aboard a British evacuation flight while Canadian officials sorted things out.

After some time in London , the Rahimis were eventually allowed to emigrate to Canada.

Rahimi got a job with the Ontario government, and managed to secure a small three-bedroom rental apartment in Mississauga — thanks to a kind-hearted refugee advocate who allowed Rahimi to use her as a guarantor.

“If we were stuck in Afghanistan, there would be no opportunities for my daughters to go to school,” he said, adding that his 14-year-old daughter Marwa — who started attending high school this week — has aspirations of becoming a doctor.

“I’m glad for my children — because they are living here, they have futures. They will be educated.”

While he’s beyond happy at their shot at a safe and fruitful life in Canada, life here hasn’t been without its challenges — particularly surrounding affordability.

“Rent is very high, like 70 per cent of our income,” he explained, saying they pay nearly $2,700 per month to rent their three-bedroom apartment.

The high cost of living have all but extinguished Rahimi’s hopes of owning a home in Canada.

Registering his children for school was also a challenge, he said — but he was pleasantly surprised at how quickly his kids managed to pick up English, saying that even his two-year-old son Omar has started using English words.



Farida Rahimi and husband Ahmad Rahimi in Mississauga, Ont. on Wednesday, Aug. 30 2023.© Peter J. Thompson

His wife, while fluent in six languages, is having a harder time learning English — something that Canadian Forces veteran and evacuee advocate Amanda Moddejonge said is common.

“There’s a particular saying that I laugh at every time I hear it — it’s ‘happy wife, happy life,'” she said.

“If you can find a way to make your wife just a little bit happier here, the entire family could adjust easier — but the families where the wife doesn’t speak English, they’re having a difficult time adjusting.”

That, she said, is thanks to a lack of government support for evacuees once landing in Canada, who were largely left to underfunded community support services to provide language training.

Many families, Moddejonge said, are also dealing with broken family bonds.

Those fortunate enough to escape almost always left loved ones behind, many living in hiding.

Rahimi says his brothers managed to flee to Iran and Pakistan, while his elderly father remains in Afghanistan in poor health.

His wife Farida is currently dealing with the recent death of her father, also left behind two years ago.

This remains a very real problem for evacuees, says retired CAF veteran Robin Rickards, who spent years securing safe passage for the Afghan national who served alongside him as an interpreter for Canada.

“The people that have come to Canada are burdened with survivor’s guilt,” Rickards said.

To this day, Rickards, Moddejonge and those who managed to flee to Canada are still inundated with cries of help from those left behind.

“That’s the burden that these families are struggling with, and to some degree there’s an expectation — either spoken or unspoken — that refugees should be grateful for what Canada gives them,” Rickards said.

“But it’s easy to see the way Canada is treating people that worked for us could lead to resentment.”

This was the consequence, he said, of Canada’s government of treating the evacuation — which occurred on the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dissolved parliament ahead of that fall’s federal election — as a political issue rather than a humanitarian one.

“This is the consequence of the government’s failed policy.”

• Email: bpassifiume@postmedia.com | Twitter: @bryanpassifiume

THE GOP AGENDA

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to trigger mass layoffs at federal agencies — and he thinks the Supreme Court will back him up

Ramaswamy previewed his effort to shut down federal agencies ahead of a speech at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stacked with former Trump administration officials.

Sept. 12, 2023,
By Allan Smith

Vivek Ramaswamy believes he has the perfect approach to undermine the administrative state and the power wielded by career civil servants — trigger mass layoffs at federal agencies and defend his effort before the Supreme Court.

Speaking with NBC News ahead of a major policy speech at the America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, where he is scheduled to explain how he would shrink the federal workforce, Ramaswamy, the businessman-turned-candidate, detailed his plans, which include shutting down a series of federal agencies and using "reduction in force" regulations to trim the number of government workers.

"The reality is the adviser class from the D.C. swamp has convinced Republican presidents from Reagan to Trump that they can’t reorganize the federal government or lay off large numbers of federal employees without congressional permission or within federal regulations," he said. "And we’re going to lay out tomorrow why that view is wrong."

The proposals Ramaswamy is putting forward would add up to some of the most sweeping short-term changes ever to the federal government. And he proposes to do large parts of it by executive action, without votes in Congress — which enacted the laws forming agencies Ramaswamy wants to end — reaching far beyond what past Republican administrations concluded were the limits of their power.

Ramaswamy predicted the legal challenges he would face would center on civil service protections for career officials. His understanding is that they apply to individual employee firings, not mass layoffs.

"We are pointing out parts of the U.S. Code that expressly highlight that they don’t apply to mass layoffs," Ramaswamy said. "Yes, they apply to individual employee firings, which is what they use to convince prior presidents, including Trump, that they couldn't do it.

"But if you actually read the U.S. Code in full," Ramaswamy continued, "they don’t apply to mass layoffs they call reductions in force. And large-scale reductions in force are absolutely the method that I’ll be using."

Vivek Ramaswamy in Contoocook, N.H., on Sept. 2.Erin Clark / Boston Globe via Getty Images file

Notably, reduction in force regulations, as laid out by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, include a clear legal process by which career officials can keep jobs in the event of layoffs. The process takes into account factors including tenure, first and foremost, as well as previous performance ratings. The Reagan administration used the regulations to shrink government during the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, but the federal workforce ultimately grew under his watch.

Ramaswamy welcomes legal challenges to his effort and predicted the Supreme Court would side with him in a 6-3 decision. Six of the justices were appointed by GOP presidents.

"And that then codifies the changes we’re driving into judicial precedent so that the president won’t have his hands tied in the same way," Ramaswamy said. "We’re going to get far more powerful than a game of pingpong on this."

Ramaswamy has been campaigning for months on eliminating federal agencies, with initial targets including the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Education Department; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Food and Nutrition Service within the Agriculture Department. Ramaswamy has said he would effectively shut down or reorganize each of those agencies at the start of his presidency.

Thousands of FBI employees, he said, would be reallocated to other agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He added that the agencies he is targeting are just "five of many more to come."

Ramaswamy said his speech Wednesday will offer additional clarity about what authority he believes a president has to make such changes without congressional authorization, going beyond the briefly enacted Trump administration executive order known as "Schedule F" — an effort Donald Trump and other Republican aspirants want to reinstitute at the start of a new administration. The order would reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees involved in policy decisions as at-will employees, effectively canceling their employment protections and making it much easier for a president to fire them.

Republicans have sought for years to shrink government and get past bureaucrats they see as hostile to their initiatives, but right-wing efforts to crack down on the civil service have intensified recently. That has been especially true as Trump has painted federal law enforcement as biased against him and as Republicans pilloried officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, over the role they played in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization dedicated to an effective federal government, said this year that the Republican calls to fundamentally alter how the civil service works are causing "quite a bit of anxiety in the federal workforce and in the broader community of organizations that are focused on trying to help our government work more effectively," adding that there is "a lot of uncertainty" over what a potential GOP administration could do.

And it is Ramaswamy who has arguably gone the furthest in the field on these issues.

"Everything else has been danced around with Schedule F exceptions, and everyone is tiptoeing around the front door argument," he said. "Now, I’m actually just shutting down these agencies. This speech is going to lay out a level of detail that I think will further take a sledgehammer to that Overton window."

The "Overton window" is a term referring to the ideological boundaries of a political debate.

Ramaswamy this year argued that existing Article II powers in the Constitution allow a president to undertake such a reshaping of the federal workforce without congressional buy-in. Acknowledging there is "nuance and complexity" to his effort, he says now that it is more about using laws on the books, like the Presidential Reorganization Act of 1977, rather than making a strictly constitutional argument.

Some rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have ripped Ramaswamy's ideas. After the first GOP presidential primary debate last month, Pence's campaign sent a release to reporters saying Ramaswamy's call to shutter the FBI amounted to an embrace of "the Radical Left’s pro-crime, anti-cop ‘Defund the Police’ agenda.”

On Monday, Christie called Ramaswamy's idea to eliminate the FBI "one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard," citing anti-terrorism efforts the bureau has undertaken in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Don’t throw that out for a sound bite at a debate to make yourself sound like you’re really smart and aggressive when you’re really shallow and only 38 years old," Christie said at an event in New Hampshire.

In response, Ramaswamy said the "Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Karl Rove wing of the party, I think, has a very different vision for the future of the Republican Party than the future that I’m going to be leaning into."

It is notable that Ramaswamy will deliver his speech before the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stacked with former Trump administration officials that some view as a government-in-waiting for a second Trump administration.

But Ramaswamy, who has aligned himself closely with Trump, does not think the group is in the tank for Trump. He said he wanted to speak before the group because it has been "at the leading edge" of the effort to reinstitute Schedule F and could offer a "neutral venue" in the fractious 2024 primaries.

Art detective helps Dutch police recover stolen van Gogh painting

Story by Aliza Chasan •8h

A Dutch art detective returned a Vincent van Gogh painting to a museum Tuesday more than three years after it was stolen.

Arthur Brand, known as the "Indiana Jones of the Art World," announced the recovery of "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring," also known as "Spring Garden," on his Instagram account. He returned the painting to the Groninger Museum director.

"A great day for all Van Gogh lovers worldwide," Brand wrote.

Brand said he worked closely with Dutch police to recover the painting, which van Gogh painted in 1884. It was swiped on March 30, 2020 — van Gogh's birthday — from The Singer Laren museum, where it was on loan for an exhibition. The museum was closed at the time of the theft to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


This undated handout photo shows The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, 1884, by Vincent van Gogh, at the Groninger Museum, Netherlands. / Credit: Marten de Leeuw / AP© Provided by CBS News

Police arrested a 58-year-old suspect in 2021, but the painting remained missing. Brand did not share details about how the painting was finally recovered. Groninger Museum director Andreas Blühm also did not elaborate on the recovery, though he said Brand played a key role in the case.

"The Groninger Museum is extremely happy and relieved that the work is back," Blühm said. "It is currently in good company in the Van Gogh Museum."

The artwork will be scientifically examined in the coming months. The Groninger Museum said it hopes to have the painting back on display soon, but it "could take weeks, if not months."

"The painting has suffered, but is – at first glance – still in good condition," the museum wrote.

"The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" was painted in 1884. It's an oil on paper painting depicting a person surrounded by trees, with a church tower in the background. The painting is the only van Gogh work in the Groninger Museum's collection.



Dutch art detective Arthur Brand poses for a photograph during an interview with AFP in north London on January 20, 2019. / Credit: NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP via Getty Images© Provided by CBS News

CBS News has reached out to police in the Netherlands for additional details on the painting's recovery.

Brand's accomplishments include returning a stolen Roman statue last year. The sculpture had been taken from Musee du Pays Chatillonnais in December of 1973. He also recovered Salvador Dali's "Adolescence," a Picasso painting and "Hitler's Horses," sculptures that once stood outside the Nazi leader's Berlin chancellery.

The art detective in 2017 told "CBS Mornings" that he's brokered deals with terrorist groups, the mafia and a slew of shady characters in order to track down pieces on the black market.

"On one hand you have the police, insurance companies, collectors, and on the other hand you have the criminals, the art thieves and the forgers. So there are two different kind of worlds, and they do not communicate. So I put myself in the middle," Brand said.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Eight catastrophic floods in 11 days: What’s behind intense rainfall around the world?

Story by Denise Chow •NBC

The catastrophic flooding in Libya that has left as many as 10,000 people feared dead is just the latest in a string of intense rainfall events to hammer various parts of the globe over the past two weeks.

In the first 11 days of September, eight devastating flooding events have unfolded on four continents. Before Mediterranean storm Daniel sent floodwaters surging through eastern Libya, severe rains inundated parts of central Greece, northwestern Turkey, southern Brazil, central and coastal Spain, southern China, Hong Kong and the southwestern United States.

Seeing this many unrelated extreme weather events around the world in such a short period of time is unusual, said Andrew Hoell, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Sciences Laboratory.


People walk past the body of a flood victim in Derna, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2023. (AFP - Getty Images)© AFP - Getty Images

“Sometimes we have a clustering of these events, whether it’s in a given country, given hemisphere or globally,” he said. “And it seems like right now, globally, this is prime time for a number of flooding events.”

Like with many other forms of extreme weather, scientists say climate change is likely having an impact on rainfall and flooding, but understanding precisely what that relationship is can be tricky.

In general, studies have shown that global warming is intensifying the planet’s water cycle. Warmer temperatures increase evaporation, which means a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. As a result, when storms occur, they can unleash more intense precipitation and thus cause severe flooding.



People mourn during the burial of a victim in Mucum, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, on Sept. 9, 2023. (Claudia Martini / Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)© Claudia Martini

Researchers have observed those changes over time as the world warms. Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.04 inches per decade, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

However, a number of factors can influence flooding events and their severity, and teasing out the fingerprints of climate change when they all interact can be challenging, Hoell said.

“From a 1,000-foot view, it’s definitely true that if you have higher temperatures, you have more water vapor, and therefore you can have more precipitation fall from the sky,” he said. “But when you look at a specific event, and the specific set of physical processes relevant to that event, it then becomes difficult to attribute every single process in that causal chain.”

For one, the types of extreme weather that caused each of the eight catastrophic flooding events in September had different origins.



A flooded neighborhood in Larissa, Greece, on Sept. 10, 2023. (Nick Paleologos / SOOC/AFP via Getty Images)© Nick Paleologos

It was a Mediterranean storm named Daniel that dumped heavy rain over central Greece and Libya. Typhoon Haikui and its remnants lashed Hong Kong and southern China with record-breaking rainfall, waterlogging urban and rural areas, destroying roads and causing more than 100 landslides.

Torrential downpours caused flash flooding in central and coastal regions of Spain, northwest Turkey and thousands of miles away in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

And fast-moving thunderstorms over southern Nevada earlier this month caused flash flooding across the region, swamping the Las Vegas Strip and stranding more than 70,000 people at the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert.



A man is rescued and evacuated during flooding in Istanbul on Sept. 5, 2023. (Yasin Akgul / AFP - Getty Images file)© Yasin Akgul

With certain types of extreme flooding events, such as those associated with Mediterranean cyclones like Daniel, there simply isn't enough data to observe shifts over time.

“We really don’t have a long enough sample or record to be able to detect a change, because they’re not really that common of an occurrence,” Hoell said.

In other cases, local factors such as how wet or dry the ground is, or an area’s basic topography, can have an enormous influence on how floods develop — and their consequences.



A damaged road after a powerful storm and heavy rainfall hit Shahhat, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2023. (Ali Al-Saadi / Reuters)© Ali Al-Saadi

Beyond loss of life and property, floods increase the risks of people being exposed to waterborne pathogens, which have important implications for outbreaks of deadly disease.

Hoell said the number of devastating floods this month is distressing, but said he's especially concerned about the situation unfolding in Libya.

“If you look at the damage and the amount of people who have lost their lives,” he said, “it just blows your mind.”



A woman hugs her son as they clear her house from mud following heavy rain in Villamanta, Spain, on Sept. 4, 2023. (Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty Images file)© Pablo Blazquez Dominguez

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com