OK IT'S FOR REAL
Madame Tussauds removes Prince Harry and Meghan figures from Royal Family set

 Wax figures of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have been separated from the rest of the royals at Madame Tussauds in England.

The move follows the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s announcement that they plan to step back as “senior members” of the Royal Family to “carve out a progressive new role within this institution.”

The royal display at the popular London tourist attraction saw the Sussexes standing next to Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

“Alongside the rest of the world we are reacting to the surprising news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be stepping back as senior Royals. From today Meghan and Harry’s figures will no longer appear in our Royal Family set,” Steve Davies, general manager at Madame Tussauds London, said in a statement.

“As two of our most popular and well-loved figures they will of course remain an important feature at Madame Tussauds London as we watch to see what the next chapter holds for the them.”


THE TUSSAUDS SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION 
OF HISTORY

NOW YOU SEEM THEM

NOW YOU DON'T

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Ben Curtis/AP

Madame Tussauds in London removes Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan figures: '#Megxit'

Madame Tussauds in London tweeted out a photo of their revamped royal family display, which now does not include Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan.

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#JTF2

Trudeau confirms Canadian military personnel were at airbase hit by Iranian missiles
PM says all Canadian personnel are safe, refuses to comment on U.S. drone strike that precipitated the attack

HIS PRUDENCE WAS OF COURSE DECRIED BY HIS OPPONENTS WHILE IT 

LOOKS PRESCIENT CONSIDERING THAT CANADIAN CIVILIANS WERE ULTIMATELY KILLED AS A RESULT OF THE ILLEGAL CRIMINAL ASSASSINATION OF A MEMBER OF THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT WHO WAS ABOUT TO BOARD A COMMERCIAL PLANE AT A COMMERCIAL AIRPORT IN IRAQ.

THE TIT FOR TAT THAT IRAN THEN ACTED ON ENDED UP NOT HARMING ANY AMERICAN PERSONNEL AT THE BASES THEY ATTACKED BUT KILLED 176 PASSANGERS ABOARD A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT, 63 CANADIANS

Murray Brewster, John Paul Tasker · CBC News · 

Posted: Jan 08, 2020 6:48 PM ET | Last Updated: January 8

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to reporters with, left to right, 

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance 

and Deputy Minister of National Defence Jody Thomas at the National Press

 Theatre in Ottawa on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed today that Canadian troops were in harm's way when Iranian ballistic missiles slammed into a military base in northern Iraq early Wednesday, but he declined to condone — or criticize — the U.S. actions which precipitated the strike.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa after a separate deadly air crash in Tehran claimed the lives of 63 Canadians, the prime minister said Canada condemns the Iranian attack on the base.

"I am relieved, as are all Canadians, that all personnel deployed in Iraq are safe," Trudeau said.

He expressed admiration for the professionalism of the soldiers under fire but also repeatedly emphasized the importance of staying the course in the ongoing effort to eradicate the remnants of the Islamic State.

That message, according to government insiders, was the main focus of Canada's diplomatic efforts Wednesday, conducted through a flurry of telephone calls to world leaders.
Drone strike was Washington's call: Trudeau

Keeping the anti-Islamic State coalition together and focused has taken precedence over pressing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump for evidence justifying the American drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

"It was a threat assessment the U.S. made," said Trudeau. "It was a threat assessment the U.S. was tasked with making and made."

The Trump administration has insisted since Friday's drone strike that Soleimani represented an imminent threat to American lives — but the language it's used to support that claim has changed over the last few days, with more emphasis being placed on the general's role in creating mayhem and bloodshed in the region with the secretive Quod Force branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Iranians gesture as they gather to mourn Gen. Qassem Soleimani, 

head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed by an American 

drone strike last week. (Nazanin Tabatabaee/WANA/Reuters)

In some respects, Trudeau's remarks mirror the careful language being used by other world leaders — including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who on Monday deflected questions about whether the allies were troubled by the extraordinary decision to kill Soleimani.

NATO ambassadors were given a briefing by the U.S. State Department and military members on Monday, and apparently were given a sense of the intelligence the Americans were acting on when they ordered the drone strike. Trudeau did not say today whether Canada was convinced by that briefing, or whether he brought up the subject in a telephone call with President Trump on Wednesday.
'It opens the Pandora's Box'

Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau and a University of Ottawa professor, said Democrats in the U.S. have been doing a good job of demanding an explanation for the killing. He also emphasized the extraordinary nature of the United States targeting a foreign official for death, in legal and foreign policy terms.

"It opens the Pandora's Box and it might be one of the longer term consequences," said Paris, noting that it's largely unprecedented for a western country to kill an adversary's general outside of a state of war.

The focus of U.S. allies, including Canada, appears to be "stabilizing this situation, which is explosive," he said.

Trudeau said Canada is prepared to continue the "extremely important" anti-ISIS NATO training mission in Iraq.

"NATO has a significant role in the training mission that we're moving forward with — but there are always going to be more reflections on what are the next steps to take, given the current circumstances," the prime minister said.
Keeping the anti-ISIS mission alive

Canada has about 500 troops in Iraq, some of whom were moved out earlier this week as a precaution. Military assistance operations and most activities outside of heavily fortified compounds have been suspended until the security situation improves.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said today he could not state when, or if, the assistance might resume.

Paris said it's vital that both the NATO training mission and the more direct U.S.-led military coalition hunting ISIS holdouts resume their work.

"We have a clear interest in sustaining those missions and building up the capacity of the Iraqi government to hold the country together and to be countering any revival of ISIS," said Paris.

Iran's supreme leader says missile strike a 'slap on the face' for U.S.
Northern Iraq airbase targeted by Iran has been key in Canadian fight against ISIS
Iran missile strikes: Canadian troops safe, no known U.S. casualties

Less than two years after the American troops left Iraq following the 2003 invasion, the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of the threat from ISIS.

"It was not only horrifying in terms of ISIS's actions, but it threatened our security," said Paris. "Canada [and] the rest of our allies have a very clear interest in preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State."

Former top Canadian commander Tom Lawson, who first ordered special forces into Iraq, said that given the current tension between Iran and the U.S. — and even within the Iraqi government in Baghdad — restarting both missions could be tough.

"It's difficult to see a scenario that has [Canadian troops] return happily to supporting the Kurds in the north, and just as tough to figure out what kind of scenario could return the NATO mission out of Baghdad," the retired general told CBC's Power and Politics Wednesday night.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Murray Brewster is senior defense writer for CBC News, based in Ottawa. He has covered the Canadian military and foreign policy from Parliament Hill for over a decade. Among other assignments, he spent a total of 15 months on the ground covering the Afghan war for The Canadian Press. Prior to that, he covered defense issues and politics for CP in Nova Scotia for 11 years and was bureau chief for Standard Broadcast News in Ottawa.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=JTF2

Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation (Full Album) Listen / Stream 

Mystery of Weird Hum Heard Around the World Solved 
By Laura Geggel - Associate Editor

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Mysterious seismic hums detected around the world were likely caused by an unusual geologic event — the rumblings of a magma-filled reservoir deep under the Indian Ocean, a new study finds.

These odd hums were an unconventional geologic birth announcement. A few months after the sounds rippled around the Earth, a new underwater volcano was born off the coast of the island of Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique in the Indian Ocean.

The new findings provide a detailed, one-year timeline of the newborn volcano's birth, which would make any mother (in this case, Mother Earth) proud. The study details how magma from a reservoir about 20 miles (35 kilometers) under the ocean floor migrated upward, traveling through Earth's crust until it reached the seafloor and created the new volcano.

"It took only [a] few weeks for the magma to propagate from the upper mantle to the seafloor, where a new submarine volcano was born," study lead researcher Simone Cesca, a seismologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, told Live Science in an email. 

This illustration shows how magma in a reservoir deep underground ascended to form a submarine volcano in the Indian Ocean. (Image credit: James Tuttle Keane/Nature Geoscience (2020))

A volcano is born

The saga began in May 2018, when global earthquake-monitoring agencies detected thousands of earthquakes near Mayotte, including a magnitude-5.9 quake, the largest ever detected in the region. Then, in November 2018, seismologists recorded weird seismic hums, some lasting up to 40 minutes, buzzing around the world. To put it mildly, these mysterious hums "trigger[ed] the curiosity of the scientific community," the researchers wrote in the study.

The researchers found more than 400 such signals, Cesca said.

In 2019, a French oceanographic mission showed that a new volcano had been born near Mayotte. It was huge, measuring about 3.1 miles (5 km) long and almost a half mile (0.8 km) high.

Other researchers have suggested that these mysterious hums were tied to the new volcano and possibly a shrinking underground magma chamber, given that Mayotte has sunk and moved several inches since the earthquakes began. However, that research has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

In the new study, the researchers used data gathered worldwide, as there wasn't any local seismic data available from Mayotte. Their analyses show that two major stages led to the volcano's birth. First, magma from a 9-mile-wide (15 km) reservoir flowed upward diagonally until it reached the seafloor, leading to a submarine eruption, Cesca said. As the magma moved, it "triggered energetic earthquakes along its path to the surface," he said. "In fact, we reconstructed the upward migration of magma by following the upward migration of earthquakes."

A sketch showing the deep magma reservoir and the magma highway that led to the new submarine volcano in the Indian Ocean. (Image credit: Cesca et al. 2019, Nature Geoscience)

In the next stage, the magma path became a highway of sorts, allowing magma to flow out of the reservoir to the seafloor, where it built the volcano. As the reservoir drained, Mayotte sank almost 8 inches (20 centimeters). It also caused the area above the reservoir, called the overburden, to weaken and sag, creating small faults and fractures there. When earthquakes related to the volcano and tectonic plates shook this particular area above the reservoir, they triggered "the resonance of the deep reservoir and generate[d] the peculiar, very long period signals," Cesca said. In other words, those strange seismic hums.

Related: Photos: Hawaii's New Underwater Volcano

In all, about 0.4 cubic miles (1.5 cubic km) of magma drained out of the reservoir, the researchers calculated. However, given the vast size of the volcano, it's likely that even more magma was involved, Cesca noted.

Although the volcano is now formed, earthquakes may still rattle the area.

"There are still possible hazards for the island of Mayotte today," study senior researcher and head of the section Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes at the GFZ Torsten Dahm, said in a statement "The Earth's crust above the deep reservoir could continue to collapse, triggering stronger earthquakes."


The new study was published online Monday (Jan. 6) in the journal Nature Geoscience. 

The 10 Biggest Earthquakes in History
Photos: Fiery Lava from Kilauea Volcano Erupts on Hawaii's Big Island
In Photos: Aftermath of Iceland Volcano Floods

Originally published on Live Science.


Strange hums heard around the world traced to new underwater volcano
Ashley Strickland CNN Published Thursday, January 9, 2020 

This image provided by NASA Data from six orbits of the 

Suomi-NPP spacecraft on April 9, 2015 have been assembled

into this perspective composite of southern Africa and the

 surrounding oceans. (NASA via AP)

In 2018, a multitude of seismic signals were detected by earthquake monitoring agencies all over the world in May and June. They created a weird humming sound and some of the signals detected in November of that year had a duration of up to 20 minutes.

The signals and humming triggered "the curiosity of the scientific community," according to a new study that explains what happened: the formation of a new underwater volcano.

The unusual amount of earthquakes were traced to the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, one of several in the Comoros archipelago found between Africa and Madagascar.

Related StoriesHere are some of the 71 new species discovered this yearHealthy coral sounds lure fish back to dead reefs, researchers findHunter captures strange howl in northern Ontario woods

Scientists detected 7,000 tectonic earthquakes within the scope of the study. These kinds of earthquakes occur when Earth's tectonic plates become stuck as they move alongside one another. The pressure that allows them to move on causes earthquakes.

The most severe earthquakes reached a magnitude of 5.9 in May 2018.

They also encountered 407 long-period seismic signals. These Very Long Period signals, called VLPs, are harmonic and low, reminiscent of a double bass or large bell. And their 20- to 30-minute signals could be detected hundreds of miles away.

The earthquakes and signals were coming from about 22 miles off the eastern coast of the island. Researchers couldn't see any signs of volcanic activity in this area, but they suspected that magmatic processes may be forming one.

Unfortunately, there was no seismic network on this part of the ocean floor, meaning they were only able to get measurements from the island, Madagascar and Africa.

But they noticed a lowering of the island's surface by seven inches, indicating activity linked to the earthquakes.

New seismological methods developed by the researchers helped them piece together a year-long timeline to reconstruct what happened. Their study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The first phase involved magma rapidly rising from a reservoir in the mantle 18 miles below the Earth's surface. This opened a channel in the ocean floor, allowing the magma to flow and begin forming a new underwater volcano.

An oceanographic campaign in May 2019 showed that a volcano had formed in the same spot.

During the formation of the underwater volcano, earthquake activity dropped, and the ground of Mayotte lowered. Then, the VLP signals began.

"We interpret this as a sign of the collapse of the deep magma chamber off the coast of Mayotte," said Eleonora Rivalta, study co-author from the German Research Center for Geosciences GFZ. "It is the deepest and largest magma reservoir in the upper mantle to date, which is beginning to empty abruptly."

As dramatic as all of this sounds, it was hardly noticeable on the island itself. Mayotte is one of four volcanic islands in its archipelago and home to about 260,000 people, according to the study. It last erupted about 4,000 years ago.

"Since the seabed lies 3 kilometres below the water surface, almost nobody noticed the enormous eruption," said Torsten Dahm, study co-author and professor of geophysics and seismology at the University of Potsdam in Germany. "However, there are still possible hazards for the island of Mayotte today, as the Earth's crust above the deep reservoir could continue to collapse, triggering stronger earthquakes."

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Canada believes Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran: Trudeau

Ryan FlanaganCTVNews.ca Writer

@flanaganryan Contact

Published Thursday, January 9, 2020 9:36AM ESTLast Updated Thursday, January 9, 2020 2:47PM EST

TORONTO -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the plane that crashed in Iran Wednesday morning, killing all 138 people aboard, was shot down by an Iranian missile – perhaps by accident.

“We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence. The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. This may well have been unintentional,” the prime minister said Thursday afternoon at a news conference.

U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that he also believes Iran was responsible for the plane going down.

Ukraine Airlines flight PS752 when crashed near Tehran shortly after taking off. Sixty-three of its passengers had Canadian passports, and many others were living in Canada as permanent residents or on visas.

Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne has talked to his Iranian counterpart about the crash. According to a summary of the phone call released Thursday by Global Affairs Canada, Champagne pressed Mohammad Javad Zarif to allow Canadian officials into the country to take part in the investigation, help identify the victims and provide consular services.Iran has said that it has invited Canadian investigators to take part in the probe.

Canada and Iran have not had formal diplomatic relations since 2012, when Canada labelled Iran a state sponsor of terrorism.

This is a breaking news update. More details to come.

With files from The Canadian Press

Trudeau thanks Canadian allies for offering diplomatic support in Tehran in wake of Ukraine airliner crash
MICHELLE CARBERT AND BILL CURRY
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2020

Trudeau, seen here holding a news conference in Ottawa
on Jan. 8, 2020, said he could not categorically rule out
the possibility that the plane was shot down.
SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Italy and other Canadian allies with a diplomatic presence in Iran are helping to provide consular support for the friends and family of the dozens of Canadians killed aboard a Ukraine International Airlines flight that crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran.

All 176 people on board died, including at least 63 Canadians.

Canada suspended diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012 and the Italian embassy in Tehran has been representing Canadian interests in the country since then through an arrangement known as a protecting power.

At a news conference in Ottawa Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his condolences to the victims’ families and thanked Canada’s allies for their immediate help.

“We’ve had many countries step up to offer their support and assistance as we move forward, whether it’s Ukraine or countries like Australia, Italy, France to assist us in our consular work on the ground," he said.

The Prime Minister was asked whether he could categorically rule out the possibility that the plane was shot down.

“I cannot," he said. "It is too early to speculate. I would encourage people not to speculate. We are certainly aware that this is a terrible, terrible tragedy. Our focus today is on the many, many families who are grieving and our focus in the days and weeks to come will be on answering the questions that they have and that indeed we all have as to how this happened.”

Canada is seeking Iran’s approval to send a team of diplomats to Tehran and for Iranian officials to include members of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board as part of the investigation into the crash, including analyzing the plane’s black box flight recorder.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau said satellite data showed the plane took off normally

“[It was a] very standard departure. However, we lost contact with it, suggesting something very unusual happened, but we cannot speculate at this point. There are a number of possibilities,” he said.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Andriy Shevchenko, said that while Iran will oversee the investigation into the crash, Kyiv will do whatever it can to ensure Canada can take part in the probe. He said Ukraine can also act as an on-the-ground connection for Canada in Iran, as it has an embassy in Tehran.

“We just want to make sure that Canada knows that it can count on us in this situation. We have our people on the ground and, if there is anything we can do to ease the pain and to help all of us get the answers to the questions, we would be happy to do that,” the ambassador said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Younes Zangiabadi, a board member with the Iranian Canadian Congress, knew nine people killed in the crash. He called on the Canadian government to send its own team of investigators to Iran to look into the crash. He said the government should also consider establishing a direct flight between Toronto and Tehran, so Iranian-Canadians are not forced to take multiple, unreliable flights between the two countries.

Mr. Zangiabadi said emergencies such as Wednesday’s plane crash underline the need for Canada to reopen its embassy in Tehran, saying it is absurd that Canadians in Iran are being told to contact the embassy in Turkey if they need consular help.

“You have the families who have lost their loved ones and have been asked to contact the Canadian embassy in Turkey? Like, what is this? This is outrageous,” he said.

“I really hope this is a wake-up call for the Canadian government to not only think about the politics of diplomatic relations but actually the demands and the needs of Iranian-Canadians.”

Retired diplomat John Mundy was Canada's most recent ambassador to Iran before he was expelled from the country in 2007. He said the former Canadian embassy used to have two consular staff whose jobs were to help Canadians in distress in Iran, but Ottawa has lost that on-the-ground capability since cutting off diplomatic relations. That kind of emergency consular response is likely run out of Ottawa now, he said.

“Foreign Affairs would probably, given the size of the disaster, set up a pretty well-resourced team in Ottawa that would work full-time on this until they’ve provided whatever assistance they can to the families of the Canadians who have died in this accident. It would work with the Italian government and the Italian embassy on the ground in Tehran to do that,” Mr. Mundy said.

Students, doctors, children: Ukrainian airliner crash victims had roots across Canada

Bridal party, academics among Canadians killed in Ukrainian airliner crash

Trudeau says most Iran plane crash victims were connecting to Canada

Trudeau says Canada is pushing Iran for direct access to plane-crash investigation,

 but too early to speculate about cause  

Trudeau thanks Canadian allies for offering diplomatic support in Tehran in wake of Ukraine airliner crash

Ukrainian plane’s broadcast system failed three minutes after takeoff, tracking data show

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Iran plane crash leaves families, communities across Canada grappling with ‘heartbreaking’ losses 
IT DID NOT CRASH IT WAS SHOT DOWN
JAMES KELLER
PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2020 UPDATED 12 HOURS AGO
Open this photo in gallery  

Mourners attend a vigil at Amir Bakery in North Vancouver. 
The bakery is owned by Amir Pasavand, who lost his wife
 and daughter in the crash
SHAGHAYEGH MORADIAN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The crash of an airliner outside Tehran cut a deep wound across Canada’s Iranian community – ending promising academic careers, taking the lives of new immigrants, and ripping apart families who were already nervously watching a deepening conflict between their home country and the United States.

In Alberta, about 30 people were believed to be among the victims, including professors, students and staff at the University of Alberta. A community leader in Edmonton noted that about 1 in every 100 Iranians living in the city were on Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, many returning home from visiting family for the holidays.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said 138 people with connections to Canada, including at least 63 citizens, were killed. It is the largest Canadian death toll in an air disaster since the 1985 Air India bombing, in which 280 citizens or permanent residents died.

Details about the victims painted portraits of talent and academic achievement. Canada has a reputation for welcoming Iranian immigrants and students without the hurdles and sanctions they might face in the United States. Those killed include a leading expert in wireless technology, and a researcher in artificial intelligence. Engineers and teachers. Dentists and doctors. A high-school student. A young family. Newlyweds.

Reza Akbari, the president of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton, said the impact will ripple far beyond the Iranian diaspora.

“It is heartbreaking,” he said. “The doctors, they have patients that can be anybody, regardless of their background or their culture. The university professor, he passed on education to anybody – students from all cultures and backgrounds.”
Open this photo in gallery 

Residents hug during a memorial service in Edmonton, Jan. 8, 2020.
TODD KOROL/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Open this photo in gallery 

Mourners lay flowers and light candles at a memorial serice in Edmonton.
TODD KOROL/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Mr. Akbari said his group and others were scrambling to plan memorial events later in the week. A small vigil was held on Wednesday evening on the front steps of the Alberta legislature. With the temperature hovering around -20, people lit candles to remember the victims. Many of them knew at least one person who died in the crash. Some held each other, crying. Others, whose families are still in Iran, came to find support among the tight-knit community.

The worsening security situation in the region would have been top of mind for the passengers of the flight. Just hours earlier, Iran had fired 15 missiles at a pair of military bases in Iraq that housed U.S. forces – an attack that was retaliation for a U.S. drone strike that killed an Iranian military commander.

Payman Parseyan, a former president of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton, said Iranian-Canadians were following the situation closely, particularly those with family in the region. Mr. Parseyan said he was watching coverage of the conflict on Tuesday evening when news of the plane crash broke.

Ghanimat Azhdari, 36, a member of Iran’s nomadic Qashqai tribe who was a Phd student at the University of Guelph, also died. In an e-mail to her PhD supervisor, Faisal Moola, just before she left, she brought up the Middle East tensions.

“Everything in Iran is safe, secure and normal,” Ms. Azhdari wrote. “There is just news full of menace from both sides and we hope for peace in 2020 in the region as well as the world.” She told Dr. Moola she would be landing in Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. He was going to pick her up.

“See you soon,” Ms. Azhdari wrote.

Her research focused on supporting Indigenous people in protecting their traditional territories and the environment – work that Dr. Moola said made her a bridge-builder.

“[She] has this ability to move between two different worlds just absolutely seamlessly,” Dr. Moola said.

Open this photo in gallery
Mourners sign books of condolence at a memorial service at Western University in London, Ont., for four of the school's graduate students who were killed in the plane crash.
GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Open this photo in gallery

Attendees wipe away tears during a memorial service at Western University.
GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The impact on Canada’s university community was apparent immediately. Several schools confirmed faculty members or students were among the dead, and paid tribute to their achievements.

The University of Alberta’s president, David Turpin, was close to tears as he grappled with the scale of the loss, which he said would take years for the school to recover from. “Words simply cannot express the grief we are feeling on campus." The University of Toronto’s president said the campus is heartbroken. In Halifax, Dalhousie University’s provost, Teri Balser, said the school must come to terms with “a world that sometimes feels capricious and unsafe.”

The crash hit the academic community particularly hard because grad school is one of the main channels for Iranians coming to Canada, said Mohammad Keyhani, an associate professor at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary who is from Iran.

“Grad programs usually have funding,” said Dr. Keyhani, whose research focuses on entrepreneurship and strategy. “That’s often the only way they can afford to study in Canada.”

Trips back to Iran when school is out are common. Dr. Keyhani and his wife, Safaneh Neyshabouri, also a U of C instructor, nearly booked a trip back this year.

But they decided the long flight would be too difficult for their three-year-old son. “It’s horrifying,” said Dr. Neyshabouri, who teaches women’s and Muslim studies.

The passengers included at least one Canadian who was not supposed to be on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.

Asgar Dhirani, who was in Iran leading a religious tour of Shia Islamic shrines with his wife, Razia, was rerouted because his initial flight was full. His wife arrived in the Greater Toronto Area on Wednesday as scheduled, said daughter Rehana Dhirani.

Mr. Dhirani, a 74-year-old semi-retired accountant, was joined on the flight by two women who were part of his tour: Afifa and Alina Tarbhai, a mother and daughter from the GTA, according to Mr. Dhirani’s family.

The Tarbhai family was too distraught to speak about their deaths, said a man who answered the phone at the elder woman’s home in Aurora.

Hamed Esmaeilion, a dentist from Richmond Hill, Ont., lost his wife, Parisa Eghbalian, and their nine-year-old daughter.

The family, which immigrated to Canada in 2010, opened presents on Christmas Day before Dr. Eghbalian and their daughter, Reera flew out that evening. They were expected back on Wednesday.

He said they hadn’t been home to visit relatives in about two years and were excited to attend a family gathering. “In the last moment, I hugged my daughter and we cried a little bit,” Dr. Esmaeilion said.

He is now heading to Tehran with a hope of finding answers about what happened.

“I have friends here, but no relatives," he said. “I have to go. I’m alone here."

Open this photo in gallery 

Photos of plane-crash victims alongside flowers and candles 
during a memorial service in Edmonton.
TODD KOROL/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
With reports from Kelly Cryderman, Emma Graney, Carrie Tait, Kathryn Blaze Baum, Justin Giovannetti and Jill Mahoney

EZRA LEVANT ATTACKS HIS OLD EMPLOYER CBC OVER UKRAINIAN AIRLINER EXPLOSION

EZRA LIES DEPT.

From Twitter

Ezra Levant 🍁verified_user

ezralevant

CBC's website still has not reported the news that Iran shot down the plane, killing 63 Canadians. They're still treating it like an innocent crash. Maybe Trudeau's state broadcaster is waiting for the official Liberal talking points. They'll be waiting a while. https://t.co/gLGe2Y0QEL

Twitter10:39 a.m.

BUT IT IS NOT TRUE CAUSE HERE IS THE SCREEN SHOT FROM THE CBC WEBSITE EZRA TAGS. 

Joey Zanfino
@BoxofgradeAs 
29m
Replying to 
@ezralevant

It's actually right there on their website, but keep up your narrative.

Dave Wilken

@DaveWilken1

·

19m

Replying to

@ezralevant

But they did before your tweet Ezra. https://twitter.com/cbcalerts/status/1215325195222896640?s=21…

Quote Tweet

CBC News Alerts

@CBCAlerts

· 36m

BREAKING: U.S. officials have shared intelligence with Canada to back up the view that Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 152 was brought down by an Iranian missile, sources tell CBC News.

Show this thread