RCMP VS SIKH'S AN OLD STORY

Two Sikh rally organizers say they were wrongly arrested amid Parliament bomb scare

Published on June 13, 2022
By Sonia Ulebor


OTTAWA — Two organizers of a Sikh event near Parliament Hill on Saturday say they are still in shock after being wrongfully arrested in connection with a bomb threat, an experience one of the men described as “disrespectful” and “harassment.”

Officials have released few details about the “potential threat” that prompted an evacuation of Parliament and closure of surrounding streets for several hours on Saturday. Police only said later in the day their investigation had concluded and no threat to public safety was found.

Manveer Singh and Parminder Singh say they are speaking out about the arrests in order to defend their reputations — and they are raising questions about who gave their names to investigators and why, as well as how police handled that information.

“It doesn’t make sense because I know I am not involved in anything. I’m proud as a Canadian Sikh. I love this country, I will do everything to protect this country,” said Parminder Singh.

“Why am I arrested? Because I’m wearing a turban and my skin is not white? What’s going on?”

The two men are organizers of a remembrance rally for the victims of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. The group had received a permit to gather on the Hill, but when members arrived, they were told they were not allowed to be there because of an ongoing threat in the area.

They relocated to the lawn in front of the Supreme Court of Canada nearby to hold their event.

Harpreet Hansra, another rally organizer, said an officer sought to speak with him and asked him to identify Manveer Singh, who was designated as one of the MCs for the event.

A few minutes after the rally got underway, Manveer Singh said police arrested him and told him they had “credible information” that he was connected to a serious bomb threat on the Hill.

“They believed that I’m the one who’s gonna do that. I was shocked. I’m gathering my community here to bomb them?” he said, adding that police searched him, handcuffed him and brought him to the police station for questioning.

He said police asked to frisk his turban while searching him outside the Supreme Court.

“If I don’t obey their instructions they could have done anything to me, because the threat was very big, it was a security threat to the national Parliament.”

Parminder Singh said he was arrested not long afterward by Ottawa police, who told him that his name was connected to an alleged bomb threat of Parliament.

Ottawa police did not answer questions about the men’s account of events, saying only that the investigation into the matter is now concluded and no charges were laid.

The two organizers said that police also searched their cars for explosives.

The remaining organizers decided to wrap up their event sooner than planned due to fear of the ongoing threat and the fact that two of their members were taken by police, Hansra said.

Hansra went to the police station afterward with two other organizers, he said.

When in police custody, both men said officers had them take off their turbans. Manveer Singh said he was also made to remove other religious symbols including a bracelet called a kara and a ceremonial sword known as a kirpan.

“They wanted me to untie my turban because they have to search very closely … Because I believe that I was the terrorist at that time in their eyes,” he said.

After being in custody for a short while, Parminder Singh said police released him and apologized, adding they arrested him based on wrong information.

“We spoke to the officers that were there and they were very clear. They apologized profusely and said, ‘Sorry that this happened, and we know you guys have nothing to do with it,’” he said.

Both the men who were arrested said police told them that the information that connected them to the threat came from the Canada Border Services Agency.

“They said they have no further knowledge about who or what contacted CBSA, but the information was so detailed that it warranted them to take immediate action at Parliament,” Hansra said.

Rebecca Purdy, spokesperson for Canada Border Services Agency, said in a statement Monday that the agency works regularly with law enforcement to ensure border security, including intelligence and enforcement.

The RCMP said Monday that it can only confirm details related to criminal investigations where charges have been laid.

Ottawa police said in a statement Saturday that they received information about a potential threat near the parliamentary precinct, prompting them to close some surrounding streets to vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

The Parliamentary Protective Service also ordered an evacuation of Parliament Hill, issuing an alert to all members of Parliament and staff and noting all buildings in the precinct were to be under shelter-in-place orders until further notice.

Both of the rally organizers say they are worried about the damage done to their reputations as a result of being arrested in connection to the explosives threat.

Although police said they were conducting an investigation and if they did not find anything, they would release him, Parminder Singh said they should have done an investigation before arresting him.

“It’s deeply hurt my kids, my wife and also other community members,” Parminder Singh said, calling the experience “disrespectful” and “harassment.”

He said his group began organizing these rallies in 2017, to gather Sikhs from across Ontario and Quebec. Events have been cancelled over the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You’re arresting me doing a peacefully rally? I’ve been doing this for almost my whole life.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2022.

—

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.



Erika Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/lssns-lrnd/lssns-lrnd-eng.pdf

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED - Sécurité publique Canada 

Oct 11, 2005 ... The report of the Honourable Bob Rae,. Independent Advisor to the ... on board Air India Flight 182, and at Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan.

https://terrorvictimresponse.ca/docs/Phase-1-report-The-Families-Remember.pdf

THE FAMILIES REMEMBER - Terror Victim Response 

Honourable Bob Rae, former premier of Ontario, considered ... is If Air India Flight 182 had been an Air Canada flight with all fair-.

http://summit.sfu.ca/system/files/iritems1/15624/etd9185_MSingh.pdf

The Bombing of Air India Flight 182: Demanding Justice, Public ... 

and as Bob Rae's (2005) Lessons to be Learned report and the final Air India Inquiry. Reports (2010a, 2010b) eventually state, these delays were directly ...

Police face growing questions, calls for 

investigation into false Parliament bomb 

tip


OTTAWA — Police are facing mounting questions about the origin of a false bomb tip that led to the arrest of two Sikh rally organizers near Parliament Hill on Saturday, with some calling for an investigation into those who alerted law enforcement about the men.



Marco Mendicino, minister of public safety, said engaging in a hoax for any reason is against the law, but it’s additionally concerning when a fake tip feeds into systemic biases.

He said he shares the concerns of the Sikh community about the incident.

"I cannot underline enough that engaging in any kind of a hoax for the purposes of misleading police, casting aspersions on a community, feeding into stereotypes, is wrong. It’s categorically wrong," said Mendicino on Tuesday.

Decisions around investigating a potential hoax are made independently by law enforcement, he said.

Harpreet Hansra, an organizer of the rally who spoke Tuesday on behalf of the men who were arrested, said they would like an investigation into where the tip came from, why police acted so quickly on it and then so swiftly deemed it to be a hoax.

Ottawa police have refused to answer questions about the men’s account of events, to provide more details about the tip or to say whether they will investigate those who made the claim, despite repeated requests from The Canadian Press.

The police service provided a one-line statement Monday saying only that the investigation into the matter has concluded and no charges were laid.

Hansra said the silence of Ottawa police worries him.

"As Canadians, we pride ourselves on transparency, on doing the right thing all the time. And we pride ourselves on being a safe haven for people from all over the world … This was not how the Sikh community felt on June 11," he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called attention to the different treatment this tip received from law enforcement compared to the response to the massive "Freedom Convoy" protest that overtook downtown Ottawa for more than three weeks in February.

"When we had people that were engaged in holding up signs and flags that were related to extreme right-wing organizations, dangerous organizations, their presence on the Hill, there was very little reaction (from police) and communities were hurt," said Singh.

In light of the police response to the blockades, he said the way the Sikh rally organizers were treated based on a false call "clearly shows there's a problem with the way threats are being taken."

The World Sikh Organization of Canada said Canadian law enforcement should fully investigate and prosecute those involved in providing the tip that led to the wrongful arrests.

“The hoax bomb threat targeting a Sikh rally in Ottawa is deeply concerning," said Tejinder Singh Sidhu, the president of the organization, which advocates for Sikhs in Canada.

"We call on law enforcement agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, to fully investigate this incident and ensure those responsible for making the false threat are fully prosecuted and held accountable."

Brandon Champagne, spokesperson for the service, said it works closely with law enforcement across the country to ensure the safety of Canadians, but directed questions about investigations to Ottawa police, who are "leading the ongoing investigation into the incident."

Police have not confirmed an ongoing investigation is taking place.

Officials have released few details about the “potential threat” that prompted an evacuation of Parliament and closure of surrounding streets on Saturday. After several hours, police said no threat to public safety was found and the area reopened.

Manveer Singh and Parminder Singh have come forward about their arrests to defend their reputations and to raise questions about who gave their names to investigators and why, as well as to express concerns about how police handled that information.

Parminder Singh described the experience as “disrespectful” and “harassment.”

The two men are organizers of a remembrance rally for the victims of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. They had a permit to hold the event on Parliament Hill, but were told when they arrived it was shut down due to an ongoing threat and they moved to a nearby location.

Soon after the rally started, the men say police arrested them and told them their names were connected to a serious bomb threat on the Hill. Manveer Singh said police claimed they had “credible information” linking him to the threat.

Police searched their cars for explosives before handcuffing them and taking them to the police station, where they were made to remove their turbans and questioned by officers, the men said. Manveer Singh also had to remove other religious symbols including a bracelet called a kara and a ceremonial dagger known as a kirpan.

The men said they were eventually released, with police apologizing and explaining that the pair were the victims of a "terrorism hoax."

Both the men said police told them that the information that connected them to the threat came from the Canada Border Services Agency.

The agency has said it works regularly with law enforcement to ensure border security, including intelligence and enforcement.

Spokesperson Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr said Tuesday that the agency does not comment on policing matters or investigations.

Robin Percival, spokesperson for the RCMP, that for privacy and operational reasons, it can only confirm details related to criminal investigations where charges have been laid.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2022.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Erika Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

U.S. wants Canada to join probe of cross-border pollution from B.C. coal mines

The United States government, including President Joe Biden's White House, has joined calls for Canada to participate in a probe of cross-border pollution coming from coal mines in southern British Columbia.



In a statement released last week, the U.S. State Department said Biden supports a joint investigation of selenium coming from Teck Resource's Elk Valley coal mines, which flows into rivers and lakes south of the border.

"The (State) Department reaffirmed the administration’s support for a joint reference to the International Joint Commission under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 for the Kootenai Basin regarding the transboundary impacts of mining," says the statement issued Wednesday.

Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to a request for a response. On June 2, spokesman Adrien Blanchard said in an email that Canada was "considering a variety of options."

The U.S. has been concerned about the Teck mines for years. The states of Montana and Idaho, eight American senators, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey and six First Nations from both sides of the border have all said selenium released by the mines threatens fish in their downstream waters.

Several of those groups have requested a reference from the International Joint Commission, which tries to mediate transboundary water disputes. References, an examination of the problem followed by recommendations, have almost always been conducted by both countries together.

The U.S. embassy in Ottawa said the State Department has been "in discussions" with Canada over the issue since September 2021. The U.S. ambassador has brought it up with B.C. Premier John Horgan, as has the U.S. consulate in Vancouver.

"There is an acute and long-standing need to reduce transboundary pollution from mining in the Kootenai Basin," said a spokesman. "We want to work with our Canadian colleagues to promptly submit a joint reference to the (commission)."

Canada and the U.S., through the commission, have worked jointly on problems in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain in Quebec and the Souris River basin in Manitoba.

The commission has said it's willing to look at the matter and has asked Canada to participate. Now, the State Department has echoed that request.

In its release, it says Canada's participation in an Elk Valley reference would lead to "impartial recommendations and transparent communication, build trust, and forge a common understanding of this issue among local, Indigenous, state, provincial, and federal governments as well as stakeholders and the public in both countries."

The release emphasizes First Nation concerns, underscoring "the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to strengthening Nation-to-Nation relationships."

"Support for a joint IJC reference reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to protect public health; conserve our lands, waters, and biodiversity; and deliver environmental justice to communities overburdened by pollution."

The government release was preceded by a statement from the six Ktunaxa First Nations in the area, which have been asking Canada to join the reference since December.

"We’re demanding meaningful dialogue," said Nasukin Gravelle of the Tobacco Plains First Nation.

“The missing piece here is Canada’s seeming refusal to participate in a joint reference submission to get the ball rolling on viable, science-based solutions. It’s a disappointment and a sad day for reconciliation when progress on dealing with the pollution of our waterways is blocked by a federal government."

Teck has acknowledged the problem.

The company has spent $1.2 billion on water treatment and plans to spend a further $750 million. It says about 95 per cent of selenium is now removed from water.

However, it has protested what it calls unreasonably low selenium limits brought in by Montana. It says those limits, which apply to the reservoir shared by both countries, are even lower than natural selenium levels in upstream rivers.

Still, the commission has said that selenium concentrations in some parts of that reservoir — Lake Koocanusa — are more than five times Montana's limits, although the levels are lower elsewhere.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2022.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story; An earlier version had Lake Koocanusa spelled incorrectly.

MANITOBA

Union guide asks teachers to use inclusive language

Yesterday 

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society wants public school educators to think twice about the words they use in their classrooms and swap binary terms for gender-neutral ones, among other adjustments.

Last month, the union representing roughly 16,600 employees in the K-12 school system, published a guide on inclusive vocabulary.

“We don’t expect that language-use will change like flipping a light switch,” said Sherry Jones, a staff officer at MTS who worked on the project in collaboration with the union’s equity and social justice standing committee.

“This is going to be a process for us, collectively, to first question the language we’re using and to transition to using language that is as inclusive as possible.”

The 14-page document, available to all teachers free of charge, stresses the importance of terminology in creating welcoming schools for all visitors — especially members of minority groups who experience bullying and discrimination at higher rates than their peers.

Educators are urged in the guide to be careful of generalizing and stereotyping, learn about the origins of the words they use and honour every individual’s preferred terms.

“Language is important when speaking about identity because it creates respect by allowing people to use language that describes their identity,” states an excerpt on pronoun usage.

Proper names of nationalities, peoples and culture should be capitalized, according to the document, which encourages teachers to consider whether introducing or describing someone by their race, culture or ancestry is necessary.

The toolkit prescribes “Indigenous” rather than “Aboriginal” as the preferred way to describe people who identify as First Nations, Métis or Inuit.


It encourages teachers to focus on individuals first — for example, writing “person with a disability” instead of “disabled person” — and discourages the use of offensive terms, such as “handicapped.” Educators should also be careful about portraying a person as “courageous” or “special” because they have a disability, per the guide.

Also in the document is an acknowledgement of the various types of diverse families that exist, ranging from blended households to common-law relationships. Teachers should refer to a “birth parent” rather than “natural parent” or “real parent,” it states.

The guidelines have been published in both English and French.

Jones said the toolkit is a working document that will evolve alongside language itself so that teachers can access a resource to help them model up-to-date terminology for their students.

The latest project will bolster the union’s existing initiative to distribute safe-space signs, which are posters displaying an intersectional LGBTTQ+ flag (a new design featuring the familiar six-colour rainbow updated with chevrons of light blue, light pink and white from the trans flag and brown and black chevrons to represent community members of colour) to teachers, she said.

So far, the feedback from members has been positive, Jones said, noting that one Winnipeg teacher has already discussed the document with students who are part of the gay-straight alliance at his school and they are discussing how to share the contents with their wider community.

It was by happenstance that the guide was published shortly before Pride month 2022; union members passed a resolution to create it at an annual general meeting in 2020.

As far as MTS president James Bedford is concerned, inclusive language should be built into all curriculum documents.

One way educators can create spaces that are both psychologically and physically safe for everyone is by adjusting vocabulary in their assignments, Bedford said. The union leader used writing a math problem that acknowledges families can have two mothers or two fathers as one simple example.

“If we’re not paying attention to the language that we use…. We could be sending a negative or an unsafe message unknowingly,” he said.

Maggie Macintosh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Free Press

NOVA SCOTIA
Controversial bill that imposed contract on teachers struck down

The Nova Scotia Scotia Supreme Court has struck down a controversial piece of legislation that imposed a contract on Nova Scotia's 9,300 public school teachers.

Justice John A. Keith called the law, known as Bill 75, "vengeful," "terribly wrong" and ultimately unconstitutional in a ruling released Monday.

In February 2017, the previous Liberal Government under Stephen McNeil passed Bill 75, to bring an end to more than a year of failed contract negotiations between the province and the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU).

When it was eventually enacted, it stripped the union of its right to strike and imposed a four-year collective agreement along with a three per cent salary increase. Hundreds of teachers protested outside the legislature while it was debated.


© Steve Lawrence/CBC

The former Liberal government created the legislation to bring an end to more than a year of failed contract negotiations between the province and the Nova Scotia Teachers Union.


Lawyers for the province argued Bill 75 was essential because three tentative agreements reached between the NSTU's bargaining team and the province were all voted down by the union's membership — even though each agreement was recommended for approval by the NSTU. It was after the third failed agreement that the McNeil Liberals introduced Bill 75.

"The terms of the collective agreement imposed by Bill 75 were significantly inconsistent with and worse than the third and final tentative agreement that the province said was the byproduct of good faith bargaining," wrote Justice Keith.

"At best," he went on, "Bill 75 was an overzealous but misguided attempt at fiscal responsibility. At worst, Bill 75 was punitive or a vengeful attempt to gain some unrelated, collateral benefit related to ongoing negotiations with other public service unions at the expense of NSTU."

The president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union Paul Wozney said his union will meet with its legal counsel to discuss any fallout from Tuesday's ruling. For now, he said the union feels vindicated.

"The imposition of Bill 75 by the McNeil Government facilitated the only province-wide teachers strike in the history of Nova Scotia, and today's ruling justifies the unprecedented actions educators took at the time to defend their collective rights and public education," said Wozney. "Even today, five years later, the impacts of Bill 75 on teacher morale are still being felt. Hopefully this will help provide some additional closure."

Justice Keith said the NSTU is entitled to costs.

S.Korea strike disrupts shipments of key cleaning agent for chipmaking



A week-long strike by truck drivers in South Korea has disrupted shipments to China of a key cleaning agent used by makers of semiconductor chips, the Korean International Trade Association (KITA) said on Tuesday.

© (photo credit: REUTERS)

Members of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union gather in front of Gwangyang port, in Gwangyang

It was the first sign that the strike was affecting the global supply chain of chip production, having already cost South Korean industry more than $1.2 billion in lost output and unfilled deliveries.

KITA said a Korean company that produces isopropyl alcohol (IPA), a chemical used in the cleaning of chip wafers, faces difficulties in shipping to a Chinese company that in turn supplies wafers to chipmakers.

About 90 tonnes of the material, or a week's worth of shipments, have been delayed, the trade body said in a statement.

It corrected an earlier statement that production had been disrupted, and clarified that the Chinese firm does not supply wafers to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's chip production operations in China.



Further delays

Also facing problems because of the strike are IPA shipments by a major South Korean petrochemical company from its plant in the port city of Yeosu.

Only an "essential amount" is being let through, said a person familiar with the matter, who sought anonymity and declined to identify the company because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The company's output of IPA is used as an industrial cleaning agent in semiconduoctors and liquid crystal displays (LCD) among other applications, it said in its website.

The truckers' union, which is protesting against soaring fuel prices and demanding guarantees of minimum pay, vowed to continue the strike after four rounds of talks with the government have failed to find a resolution.

In a statement on Tuesday, it also condemned the transport ministry for being "neither willing to talk nor capable of resolving the current situation".

"The transport ministry is neither willing to talk nor capable of resolving the current situation."Korean Truckers Union

Analysts expect the strike impact on domestic chipmakers to be limited, however, saying that both Samsung and the world's second-largest memory chip maker, SK Hynix, usually keep on hand three months or more of inventory for materials.

"Both drastically increased inventory since Japan's export curbs on-chip material in 2019 highlighted the issue," said Ahn Ki-Hyun, senior executive director of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association.
Effects of the strike

Small business owners voiced concern about the havoc a lengthy strike could deal to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, as the truckers had launched their action less than two months after social distancing norms were lifted.

"Small business owners are waiting helplessly," a dozen lobby groups for small businesses said in a joint statement, adding that shipments of liquor, food, farm and fisheries products had been blocked.

An official at HiteJinro Co Ltd, the biggest brewer of soju, the South Korean liquor, said its shipments were cut about 40% by the strike.

Large retailers were sending their own trucks to ensure inventory, but supplies were drying up for some small businesses, such as convenience stores, the official added.

 WAIT TILL THEY WALK ON LAND

Blood-sucking, snake-like fish arrive in New Brunswick waterways to spawn

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Video taken near Belleisle shows the parasitic fish spawning and building nests

Mia Urquhart · CBC News · Posted: Jun 13, 2022 7:00 AM AT | Last Updated: June 13

The mouth of a sea lamprey, a species of fish that attaches to a host, feeds on blood and has teeth on its tongue. (Tina Weltz/ROM)

It may be bad news that it's once again spawning season for the parasitic sea lamprey, meaning they're moving upriver in New Brunswick in droves. 

But the good news is that they're so focused on spawning that their digestive systems shut down. 

 "They couldn't feed if they wanted to," said Marc Gaden, the communications director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. 

"They have only one thing in mind once they reach that spawning phase, and that's to find a mate and to spawn successfully."

Sometimes mistakenly called an eel, the sea lamprey is a fish with a powerful suction cup of a mouth filled with multiple circular rows of horn-shaped teeth and a tongue that burrows into the body of the host so it can liquify its tissues and feed at will. 

These lamprey spend a good part of their life at sea, attached to, and feeding off the blood of, other fish. But at this time of year, adults return to inland brooks and rivers to spawn. 

Oana Birceanu, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, has been studying sea lamprey for years.

"I've worked with the sea lampreys for so many years, yet I've never seen them build their nests in the wild," said Birceanu.

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s website describes a lamprey's mouth as 'a large oral sucking disk filled with sharp, horn-shaped teeth surrounding a razor sharp rasping tongue.'

That's why she was fascinated by a video taken by Mike Sherwood near his Belleisle area home. It's underwater footage of several lamprey building nests in a brook in Midland. 

"It's fascinating," Birceanu said after watching the video. 

Sherwood's video show adult lamprey latching moving rocks around — some bigger than softballs.

Other parts of the video show them latched onto even bigger rocks with their powerful suction-cup mouths. 

At one point, it even captures two fish spawning in one of the crescent-shaped nests they were working on. 

Life cycle of lamprey

Birceanu said the males typically leave the Atlantic Ocean first and lead the way to the spawning grounds.

She said pheromones given off by the larvae from previous seasons that are still in the area help guide them. The females then follow those pheromones and the ones given off by the males, which begin working on the nests even before the females arrive. 

She said sea lampreys seek out rocky areas to spawn because the rocks help protect the newly laid eggs. Ideally, they look for rocky terrain upstream and a silty bottom downstream. 

The eggs develop into worm-like creatures that make their way to where they can burrow into the sandy bottom. They usually remain in this state, feeding off algae and decomposing matter, for three to seven years — and as long as 14 years in some cases, said Birceanu. 

The head of a sea lamprey with its mouth closed, concealing the creepiness within.

Once they reach about 120 millimetres in length, they stop feeding and they go through a metamorphosis, where they  transform into their adult bodies. This roughly two-month transformation even alters the way they breathe, so that they can continue to breathe while completely latched onto a host. 

Once the transformation is complete, these juveniles head to the sea, where they attach to host fish and then feed at will as the host goes on with life. 

Then, when it's time to spawn, lampreys return to inland waters to start the cycle all over again. But once finished, both males and females die. 

"They exert all of their energy in that spawning phase, and they die after spawning," said Gaden.

Same fish, different story

Sea lampreys are native to Atlantic Canada. They are part of the ecosystem, and other species have learned to evolve with them. They are even beneficial to fish such as salmon, by returning valuable nutrients to the environment when scores of them die after spawning. 

But in other places, they are an invasive species that has altered the ecosystem and decimated other fish populations. 

The Great Lakes were particularly hard hit after new canals opened up new habitat for sea lampreys in the mid-1900s. 

Gaden said the sea lampreys' scientific name means stone sucker. 

"The power of that suction cup is also what makes the sea lamprey so lethal in the Great Lakes," he said. 

Marc Gaden is communications director and legislative liaison for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. (Submitted by Marc Gaden)

They latch onto fish and their tongue drills through the scales and skin of their host and feed on the blood and tissue, usually killing the host. 

"Very often in their native range in the Atlantic, the sea lamprey will be a true parasite. That is, it might be able to feed off of the fish and not kill the host and then maybe move on to another species." 

But in the Great Lakes, the native species aren't large enough to survive their parasitic hitchhikers, and millions of fish were killed in the process. 

Gaden said a single sea lamprey can feed and kill off about 40 pounds of fish in about two years. 

For decades, the Great Lakes Fisher Commission has been working to get control over the lamprey population. Each year, they spread lampricide in waterways to kill the larvae by the millions.

Sea lamprey populations in Lake Superior are on the way back up ,according to Alex Gonzalez of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service. (photo credit: T. Lawrence GLFC)

Without such vigilant and sustained efforts, Gaden said it wouldn't take long for sea lampreys to flourish again. After all, each female is capable of laying between 50,000 and 120,000 eggs. And without any natural predators, the comeback would be swift. 

"Sea lamprey are very opportunistic. If you ease up control even briefly, they'll bounce back in the matter of a couple of years."

The commission keeps a running tally on its website of how many sea lampreys have been killed so far this year. The counter is currently at more than 2.5 million. 

Since their numbers peaked, Gaden said the eradication efforts have reduced sea lamprey by 95 per cent, "and that saves well over 110 million pounds of Great Lakes fish a year."

'A great parlour trick'

Gaden helps run the commission public awareness campaign, where he takes live sea lampreys on the road. He said they make "a great parlour trick" and he's lost count of the number of times he's had one attached to his flesh. 

He said it's a demonstration of how powerful the suction is, but since lampreys don't feed on warm-blooded animals, they don't drill into humans with their tongue. 

Gaden said it's impossible to pull the fish off once they latch. It shows how impossible it would be for a host fish to shake one off itself. He said it takes some effort to squeeze the sides of its mouth until the suction is broken with an audible pop. 

Hamilton Mountain MP Lisa Hepfner with a sea lamprey attached to her hand, along with Niagara Centre MP Vance Badawey on Parliament Hill in April. (Submitted by Marc Gaden)

"You do have to break the seal. You can't just pull it off. I've heard it described as about as powerful as a shop vac."

Gaden recently took his lamprey show to Parliament Hill and had several members of Parliament volunteer to have a lamprey attached to their hand. 

With all the horror-show attributes lampreys have going for them, one legend is not true. Lampreys do not travel across land, said Gaden. Although they're capable of sucking their way over and around barriers, they do not leave the water, unlike some species like the snake head, another invasive species in Canada, which can travel across land for short distances. 

The video

Birceanu said Sherwood's video shows the males building the nest. She said the males have a ridge along their back that "looks like a vein." They're also more silvery than females. 

She said at one point in the video, the female releases her eggs at the same time the male releases his sperm. 

"The male and the female are intertwined and they have that quivering behaviour and that's when they're releasing eggs and the males are releasing the sperm," said Birceanu.

 

Strange Giraffoid Fossil Solves Giraffe Evolutionary Mystery

By CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 JUNE 7, 2022

Intermale-competitions of giraffoid, foreground: Discokeryx xiezhi, 

background: Giraffa camelopardalis. 

Credit: WANG Yu and GUO Xiaocong

Giraffes are quite distinctive due to their extremely long necks. In fact, their necks can be as long as 7.9 feet (2.4 m). Even though there have been various hypotheses as to the evolutionary origin of these longs necks, they haven’t had sufficient proof, leaving it an unsolved mystery.

Charles Darwin suggested the “competing browsers hypothesis,” which basically says that the elongated necks evolved because they enabled giraffes to reach food that competitors could not. It makes sense, but was this really what happened?

Now, fossils of a strange early giraffoid have revealed the key driving forces in giraffe evolution, according to a study led by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The study was published in the journal Science on June 2, 2022.

Modeling of high-speed head-butting in Discokeryx xiezhi using finite element analyses, with (A) and without (B) the complicated joints between cranium and vertebrae, showing the stable (A) or over-bending (B) head-neck articulation. Credit: IVPP

How the giraffe’s long neck evolved has long been an evolutionary mystery. Although there have been different opinions about the process of giraffe neck elongation, scientists never doubted that the impetus for neck elongation was high foliage.

However, as observation of giraffe behavior increased, scientists began to realize that the elegant, long neck of giraffes actually serves as a weapon in male courtship competition and this may be the key to the giraffe evolutionary mystery.

Specifically, giraffes use their two-to-three-meter-long swinging necks to hurl their heavy skulls—equipped with small ossicones and osteomas—against the weak parts of competitors. As a result, the longer the neck, the greater the damage to the opponent.

IVPP researchers and their collaborators conducted their study on Discokeryx xiezhi, a strange early giraffoid. This research contributes to understanding how the giraffe’s long neck evolved as well as to understanding the extensive integration of courtship struggles and feeding pressure. In fact, the neck size of male giraffes is directly related to social hierarchy, and courtship competition is the driving force behind the evolution of long necks.


The fossil community in the Junggar Basin at ~17 million years ago. 

Discokeryx xiezhi are in the middle. 

Credit: GUO Xiaocong

The fossils in this study were found in early Miocene strata from about 17 million years ago on the northern margin of the Junggar Basin, Xinjiang. A full skull and four cervical vertebrae were part of the find.

“Discokeryx xiezhi featured many unique characteristics among mammals, including the development of a disc-like large ossicone in the middle of its head,” said Prof. DENG Tao from IVPP, a corresponding author of the study. DENG said the single ossicone resembles that of the xiezhi, a one-horned creature from ancient Chinese mythology—thus giving the fossil its name.

According to the researchers, the cervical vertebrae of Discokeryx xiezhi are very stout and have the most complex joints between head and neck and between cervical vertebrae of any mammal. The team demonstrated that the complex articulations between the skull and cervical vertebrae of Discokeryx xiezhi was particularly adapted to high-speed head-to-head impact. They found this structure was far more effective than that of extant animals, such as musk oxen, that are adapted to head impact. In fact, Discokeryx xiezhi may have been the vertebrate best adapted to head impact ever.

“Both living giraffes and Discokeryx xiezhi belong to the Giraffoidea, a superfamily. Although their skull and neck morphologies differ greatly, both are associated with male courtship struggles and both have evolved in an extreme direction,” said WANG Shiqi, first author of the study.

The research team compared the horn morphology of several groups of ruminants, including giraffoids, cattle, sheep, deer and pronghorns. They found that horn diversity in giraffes is much greater than in other groups, with a tendency toward extreme differences in morphology, thus indicating that courtship struggles are more intense and diverse in giraffes than in other ruminants.

The research team further analyzed the ecological environment of Discokeryx xiezhi and the niche it occupied. The Earth was in a warm period and generally densely forested, but the Xinjiang region, where Discokeryx xiezhi lived, was somewhat drier than other areas because the Tibetan Plateau to the south had been rising dramatically, thus blocking the transfer of water vapor.

“Stable isotopes of tooth enamel have indicated that Discokeryx xiezhi was living in open grasslands and may have migrated seasonally,” said MENG Jin, another corresponding author of the study. For animals of the time, the grassland environment was more barren and less comfortable than the forest environment. The violent fighting behavior of Discokeryx xiezhi may have been related to survival-related stress caused by the environment.

At the beginning of the emergence of the genus Giraffa, a similar environment existed. Around seven million years ago, the East African Plateau also changed from a forested environment to open grassland, and the direct ancestors of giraffes had to adapt to new changes. It is possible that, among giraffe ancestors during this period, mating males developed a way of attacking their competitors by swinging their necks and heads. This extreme struggle, supported by sexual selection, thus led to the rapid elongation of the giraffe’s neck over a period of two million years to become the extant genus, Giraffa.

Based on this elongation, Giraffa were well-suited for the niche of feeding on high foliage. However, their ecological status was necessarily less secure than that of bovids and cervids. As a result, Giraffa’s marginal ecological niche may have promoted extreme intraspecific courtship competition, which in turn may have promoted extreme morphological evolution.

Reference: “Sexual selection promotes giraffoid head-neck evolution and ecological adaptation” by Shi-Qi Wang, Jie Ye, Jin Meng, Chunxiao Li, Loïc Costeur, Bastien Mennecart, Chi Zhang, Ji Zhang, Manuela Aiglstorfer, Yang Wang, Yan Wu, Wen-Yu Wu and Tao Deng, 3 June 2022, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abl8316

CREATING QUANTUM REALITY
As the Large Hadron Collider Revs Up, Physicists’ Hopes Soar

The particle collider at CERN will soon restart. “There could be a revolution coming,” scientists say.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, a worker uses a bicycle to navigate its 17 miles of tunnels during maintenance in 2020.

Credit...Valentin Flauraud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


By Dennis Overbye
June 13, 2022

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In April, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, once again fired up their cosmic gun, the Large Hadron Collider. After a three-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, the collider has resumed shooting protons — the naked guts of hydrogen atoms — around its 17-mile electromagnetic underground racetrack. In early July, the collider will begin crashing these particles together to create sparks of primordial energy.

And so the great game of hunting for the secret of the universe is about to be on again, amid new developments and the refreshed hopes of particle physicists. Even before its renovation, the collider had been producing hints that nature could be hiding something spectacular. Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who conducts an experiment at CERN, described data from his previous runs as “the most exciting set of results I’ve seen in my professional lifetime.”

A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say.

When the CERN collider was first turned on in 2010, the universe was up for grabs. The machine, the biggest and most powerful ever built, was designed to find the Higgs boson. That particle is the keystone of the Standard Model, a set of equations that explains everything scientists have been able to measure about the subatomic world.

But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the “dark matter” that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass?

Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs — in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.

The control room of the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, reopened in April.

Credit...Pierre Albouy/Reuters

The collider was shut down at the end of 2018 for extensive upgrades and repairs. According to the current schedule, the collider will run until 2025 and then shut down for two more years for other extensive upgrades to be installed. Among this set of upgrades are improvements to the giant detectors that sit at the four points where the proton beams collide and analyze the collision debris. Starting in July, those detectors will have their work cut out for them. The proton beams have been squeezed to make them more intense, increasing the chances of protons colliding at the crossing points — but creating confusion for the detectors and computers in the form of multiple sprays of particles that need to be distinguished from one another.

“Data’s going to be coming in at a much faster rate than we’ve been used to,” Dr. Patel said. Where once only a couple of collisions occurred at each beam crossing, now there would be more like five.

“That makes our lives harder in some sense because we’ve got to be able to find the things we’re interested in amongst all those different interactions,” he said. “But it means there’s a bigger probability of seeing the thing you are looking for.”

Meanwhile, a variety of experiments have revealed possible cracks in the Standard Model — and have hinted to a broader, more profound theory of the universe. These results involve rare behaviors of subatomic particles whose names are unfamiliar to most of us in the cosmic bleachers.

Take the muon, a subatomic particle that became briefly famous last year. Muons are often referred to as fat electrons; they have the same negative electrical charge but are 207 times as massive. “Who ordered that?” the physicist Isador Rabi said when muons were discovered in 1936.

Nobody knows where muons fit in the grand scheme of things. They are created by cosmic ray collisions — and in collider events — and they decay radioactively in microseconds into a fizz of electrons and the ghostly particles called neutrinos.

Last year, a team of some 200 physicists associated with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois reported that muons spinning in a magnetic field had wobbled significantly faster than predicted by the Standard Model.

The discrepancy with theoretical predictions came in the eighth decimal place of the value of a parameter called g-2, which described how the particle responds to a magnetic field.

Scientists ascribed the fractional but real difference to the quantum whisper of as-yet-unknown particles that would materialize briefly around the muon and would affect its properties. Confirming the existence of the particles would, at last, break the Standard Model.

The Fermilab accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Ill. Fermilab’s Tevatron was the world’s most powerful collider until the Large Hadron Collider was built.

Credit...U.S. Department of Energy

But two groups of theorists are still working to reconcile their predictions of what g-2 should be, while they wait for more data from the Fermilab experiment.

“The g-2 anomaly is still very much alive,” said Aida X. El-Khadra, a physicist at the University of Illinois who helped lead a three-year effort called the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative to establish a consensus prediction. “Personally, I am optimistic that the cracks in the Standard Model will add up to an earthquake. However, the exact position of the cracks may still be a moving target.”

The muon also figures in another anomaly. The main character, or perhaps villain, in this drama is a particle called a B quark, one of six varieties of quark that compose heavier particles like protons and neutrons. B stands for bottom or, perhaps, beauty. Such quarks occur in two-quark particles known as B mesons. But these quarks are unstable and are prone to fall apart in ways that appear to violate the Standard Model.

Some rare decays of a B quark involve a daisy chain of reactions, ending in a different, lighter kind of quark and a pair of lightweight particles called leptons, either electrons or their plump cousins, muons. The Standard Model holds that electrons and muons are equally likely to appear in this reaction. (There is a third, heavier lepton called the tau, but it decays too fast to be observed.) But Dr. Patel and his colleagues have found more electron pairs than muon pairs, violating a principle called lepton universality.

“This could be a Standard Model killer,” said Dr. Patel, whose team has been investigating the B quarks with one of the Large Hadron Collider’s big detectors, LHCb. This anomaly, like the muon’s magnetic anomaly, hints at an unknown “influencer” — a particle or force interfering with the reaction.

One of the most dramatic possibilities, if this data holds up in the upcoming collider run, Dr. Patel says, is a subatomic speculation called a leptoquark. If the particle exists, it could bridge the gap between two classes of particle that make up the material universe: lightweight leptons — electrons, muons and also neutrinos — and heavier particles like protons and neutrons, which are made of quarks. Tantalizingly, there are six kinds of quarks and six kinds of leptons.

“We are going into this run with more optimism that there could be a revolution coming,” Dr. Patel said. “Fingers crossed.”

There is yet another particle in this zoo behaving strangely: the W boson, which conveys the so-called weak force responsible for radioactive decay. In May, physicists with the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or C.D.F., reported on a 10-year effort to measure the mass of this particle, based on some 4 million W bosons harvested from collisions in Fermilab’s Tevatron, which was the world’s most powerful collider until the Large Hadron Collider was built.

Paolo Girotti, a scientist at Fermilab, adjusting instruments with the Muon g-2 experiment in 2017.

Credit...Reidar Hahn/U.S. Department of Energy

According to the Standard Model and previous mass measurements, the W boson should weigh about 80.357 billion electron volts, the unit of mass-energy favored by physicists. By comparison the Higgs boson weighs 125 billion electron volts, about as much as an iodine atom. But the C.D.F. measurement of the W, the most precise ever done, came in higher than predicted at 80.433 billion. The experimenters calculated that there was only one chance in 2 trillion — 7-sigma, in physics jargon — that this discrepancy was a statistical fluke.

The mass of the W boson is connected to the masses of other particles, including the infamous Higgs. So this new discrepancy, if it holds up, could be another crack in the Standard Model.

Still, all three anomalies and theorists’ hopes for a revolution could evaporate with more data. But to optimists, all three point in the same encouraging direction toward hidden particles or forces interfering with “known” physics.

“So a new particle that might explain both g-2 and the W mass might be within reach at the L.H.C.,” said Kyle Cranmer, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who works on other experiments at CERN.

John Ellis, a theoretician at CERN and Kings College London, noted that at least 70 papers have been published suggesting explanations for the new W-mass discrepancy.

“Many of these explanations also require new particles that may be accessible to the L.H.C.,” he said. “Did I mention dark matter? So, plenty of things to watch out for!”

Of the upcoming run Dr. Patel said: “It’ll be exciting. It’ll be hard work, but we are really keen to see what we’ve got and whether there is something genuinely exciting in the data.”

He added: “You could go through a scientific career and not be able to say that once. So it feels like a privilege.”

Dennis Overbye joined The Times in 1998, and has been a reporter since 2001. He has written two books: “Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Search for the Secret of the Universe” and “Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance.” @overbye
A version of this article appears in print on June 14, 2022, Section D, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Hopes Soar as Collider Revs Up. 

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