Ancient Chinese woman faced brutal 'yue' punishment, had foot cut off, skeleton reveals

Tom Metcalfe 
 Live Science

Nearly 3,000 years ago, the foot of a Chinese woman was cut off in an amputation — probably not for a medical condition, but as punishment for committing a criminal act, a new study of her bones suggests. It's one of the few times archaeologists have discovered evidence of yue, an ancient Chinese punishment.

Various clues hint that the woman's foot was cut off as yue: her bones show no signs of any disease that could have made such an amputation necessary; and it seems the injury was roughly made, rather than with the precision of a medical amputation.

The researchers considered other possibilities for how the woman might have lost her foot, such as from an accident, a war injury or a surgical procedure, study lead author Li Nan, an archaeologist at Peking University in China, told Live Science. But "after careful observation and media discussions, our research team ruled out other possibilities and agreed that punitive amputation is the best interpretation," she told Live Science in an email.

The yue punishment was common in ancient China for over 1,000 years, until it was abolished in the second century B.C., according to a 2019 study in the Tsinghua China Law Review. At the time the woman was living, up to 500 different offenses could result in having a foot amputated, including rebelling, cheating, stealing and even climbing over certain gates, Li said.

Related: Ancient Chinese tombs hold remains of warriors possibly buried alive

But nothing about the woman's skeleton suggests what she was punished for: "We have no clue what kind of crime she committed," she said.

Five punishments

According to historians, yue was one of the "five punishments for slaves" enforced since the second millennium B.C. by emperors of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty of ancient China.

There is extensive historical evidence of the practice, and a Chinese official in the first millennium B.C. complained of the need to find special shoes for amputees.

Minor crimes were punished with beatings, but offenders who committed severe crimes could be sentenced to one of the five punishments: mo, where the face or forehead was tattooed in indelible ink; yi, in which the offender's nose was cut off; yue, the amputation of the feet (some of the worst offenders had both feet cut off); and gōng, a brutally complete castration.

The fifth was da pi, a death sentence that could be carried out by beheading, if you were lucky — alternatives included being boiled alive and being torn limb from limb by horses, according to a 1975 study in the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law.

Chinese tradition records that the five punishments were in force until they were abolished in the second century B.C. by the Han dynasty's Emperor Wen, who replaced them with a system of fines, floggings, hard labor and exile; the worst criminals were simply executed.

Li said the woman's skeleton was found in a tomb at the Zhouyuan site in China's northwestern Shaanxi province in 1999. The tomb dates from between 2,800 and 3,000 years ago, when Zhouyuan was the region's largest and most important city.

The skeleton's missing foot was largely overlooked initially, but a new examination of the remains reveals more about the woman's life, Li said.

An anatomical analysis revealed that the woman was between 30 and 35 years old when she died, and that — apart from her missing foot — she was in good health. She seems to have suffered no disease after the amputation, which suggests that she was cared for; and the growth of the remaining leg bones indicate the woman lived for about another five years before she died.

Only a few shells were found in her tomb, which might indicate that she lived in poverty, and she was probably buried by members of her family, Li said.

Related: 6 sacrificial pits filled with artifacts reveal rituals of ancient Chinese kingdom

Old bones

The woman's bones didn't show signs of any diseases that might have made a foot amputation necessary, such as diabetes, leprosy or cancer; and there was no evidence of frostbite or burns.

In addition, there seem to be few good explanations of how it could have happened by accident. "If she was attacked or fell from a high place, it didn't make sense that she only lost her right foot without other injuries," Li said.

A critical clue was that the amputation seems to have been the result of an inexpert or perhaps remorseless action — something that can be seen in the bones that remain, including what's left of the tibia, or shinbone.

"The cutting surface of her right tibia was not smooth and marked malunion [a badly-healed fracture] was observed," Li said. "A surgical amputation could do much better at that time."

The Zhouyuan amputation is the earliest evidence of yue yet found. But researchers have reported seeing mutilated skeletons with similar injuries in ancient graves, and it’s possible that older examples will be identified, Li said: "The point is not finding, but identifying."

The study was published earlier this month in the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica.

Originally published on Live Science.

A Rothschild is writing the book about Jewish space lasers conspiracy theory


By ASAF SHALEV/JTA -
The Jerusalem Post
© (photo credit: COURTESY MIKE ROTHSCHILD)


To a conspiracy theorist, last week seemed to offer evidence that the Rothschild family is plotting to undermine Elon Musk.

It started when the Tesla tycoon bashed the Democratic Party and said in a tweet that he would switch to voting Republican. A user named David Rothschild responded, mocking Musk and portraying him as an entitled whiner because Musk comes from a rich white family that benefitted from apartheid in South Africa.

Then, Rothschild himself became the target of ridicule as other users, predictably, pounced on his last name to assert that the scion of the Jewish banking family had no standing to criticize someone over issues of social privilege. “A Rothschild complaining about other people’s privileges. The joke tells itself,” one user wrote.

As if on cue, another Rothschild soon chimed in to defend the Musk mocker. “David M. Rothschild is an NYC-based economist,” tweeted a user named Mike Rothschild. “He is not related to the banking family. People might be thinking of David M. de Rothschild, an adventurer and environmentalist, 5x great-grandson of Mayer Amschel. Not all Jews are related.”

That the last names are purely coincidental is exactly the kind of lie a Rothschild would try to peddle — that is, if you’re a conspiracy theorist.


Trump supporters display QAnon posters at a 2018 rally in Florida. Recently, Latinos in the state have been inundated with anti-Semitic messages, many relating to the false QAnon conspiracy theory. 

(credit: THOMAS O'NEILL/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In reality, neither user has anything to do with the famous family. David is an economist. Mike, meanwhile, is a professional buster of conspiracy theories.

Last year, Mike released a book called The Storm is Upon Us an account of the QAnon movement. The irony of his last name is not lost on him, of course. Rothschild’s next book, which is still early in the writing process, will focus on the illustrious banking family that has been the target of antisemites for 200 years. The title is Jewish Space Lasers.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency caught up with Mike Rothschild for an interview about his book and what it’s like to do his work with such a last name.

 
JTA: So, for the record, how many banks do you own, and which parts of the global economy do you personally control?

Rothschild: [Laughs] I don’t talk about that. Those are the things you’re not supposed to know about.

It’s so funny because so much of the paranoia and the conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds stems from stuff that doesn’t exist or that people misunderstand. For example, central banks don’t have owners, they’re the monetary arm of a country. There are lots of private banks, but that’s not what they’re talking about. It’s just wild the stuff people have talked themselves into believing.

What is the craziest conspiracy theory you’ve encountered about yourself?

Oh, god, there are tons of them. That typical stuff like that I am part of this family that has $500 trillion and owns everything. I’ve also had people who think that I helped start QAnon so that I can make money off it.

There are people who think I work for Russian intelligence or that I work for Mike Flynn and my whole job is to get people involved in Q and spread disinformation about who started it so that people don’t find out who really started it.

People just make things up about you and there’s nothing you can really do about it. You can’t engage with it because then you’re validating what these people think and you’re giving them attention that they don’t deserve. And you can’t prove it’s not true. They just can’t prove it is true. And unfortunately, the way proof works is kind of misunderstood by a lot of people. I don’t have to prove this stuff isn’t true. They have to prove it is. They just don’t do it.

How did you get into researching and reporting on conspiracy theories and fringe movements?

I’ve always been interested in conspiracy theories as stories. When I was in college, I spent a lot of time listening to Coast to Coast AM, the Art Bell radio show where he would talk about UFOs, crop circles, the face on Mars — all this stuff that people that I knew didn’t talk about. These were not topics for discussion in regular society. This was the domain of crazy people.

And I thought, well, I am not a crazy person. I just enjoy these stories. I enjoy sort of picking apart why people believe this stuff. And after a while, I started to write for the blog of a critical thinking podcast that I’m a big fan of called Skeptoid. And I did that for a year, or a year and a half, just writing once a week, and I really enjoyed it. And I found that I was good at it. That started to lead to jobs in journalism.

This wasn’t something that people were writing about even up until Trump. This was the domain of weirdos. Legitimate journalists didn’t talk about conspiracy theories or hoaxes. You didn’t give it oxygen. You ignored it because then it would go away. Well, now we know that ignoring these things does not make them go away. It just makes them worse because there’s no one confronting it. There’s no one calling it out.

So what drew my attention to doing it as a profession was realizing that this stuff is everywhere and people are not talking about it in the way that they should be.

A lot of people have conspiratorial beliefs and they lead normal lives. So when does belief in conspiracy theories cross the line and become a problem? People have all kinds of weird beliefs — why does it matter?

For most people, conspiratorial beliefs are just a fun thing to talk about with your friends, things that you kick around. Everybody believes something unevidenced and weird that other people don’t really want to hear about. It could be as simple as arguing with your friends that a soccer game was fixed or that Melania Trump got replaced by another Melania Trump. It doesn’t take over your life. It doesn’t drive you to cut yourself off from the world or commit an act of violence. For the vast majority of people, it’s fine. I tell people, “You don’t need to try to get somebody out of beliefs like that. They’re not hurting anyone.”

It’s just that some people do hurt people — some people do take it too far, and then you do have acts of violence. You do have people cutting themselves off from their families, people harming themselves by not getting vaccinated or not taking COVID precautions, and at the very worst of it, you have something like Jan. 6, which is the very, very edge of conspiratorial violence, and most people are not going to do that. And even most people who were there didn’t commit an act of violence. That’s when I think you do need to start stepping in and paying attention to it.

The title of your next book, “Jewish Space Lasers,” refers to a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds causing the California 2018 wildfires using satellites. It became well known because it surfaced when Marjorie Taylor Greene had promoted the theory a few years before becoming a congresswoman. So how did your book come about?

I wanted to write about the Rothschilds for a long time, and I had written about it before. I’ve written about the Rothschild family, the Facebook memes and some of these really bizarre ideas like that Hitler was secretly the son of a Rothschild baron who impregnated a maid in Austria. Then the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing that happened. She put that Facebook post in 2018 during the wildfires. And I remember I wrote quite a bit about the directed energy weapon conspiracy theory because a lot of people were talking about it.

The head of Pacific, Gas & Electric was on the board of a Rothschild company — the Rothschild companies, by the way, don’t even have involvement from the Rothschilds. A lot of it’s just a name at this point. It’s just really wild the way this name is like a magnet for cranks and it has been for the last 200 years. The book is about trying to figure out why it became this wealthy Jewish family and not another wealthy Jewish family. Or why not the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Waltons? There are other American dynasties and the Rothschilds are not even an American dynasty. They didn’t even do particularly well in America. They really kind of failed while trying to break into New York finance in the 1800s. Why is it such a magnet for this kind of crank stuff?
Are you talking to the family?

I tried to when I started working on the book. I reached out to a bunch of different members of the family, and they don’t discuss this. They don’t talk about it. They don’t write about it. There’s nothing even in their archives about it. I talked to someone at the Rothschild family archives in London. She told me that they don’t want to put themselves in the position of proving a negative. If they come out and say, “Well, we don’t have $500 trillion. We didn’t fund both sides of every war,” they can’t prove that they didn’t. Again, the people who make these accusations have to prove that they did. But that’s not how this stuff works in popular culture. So rather than having to prove it’s not true, they just don’t discuss it.

It’s not the first book that touches on the topic of the Rothschilds. So what new ground do you hope to break?

I’m trying to run down this specific aspect of the family’s legacy, or why these conspiracy theories have stuck for so long. There are quite a number of books on the Rothschilds. There were a lot of books written about them in the ’60s and ’70s, but they’re very dishy; they’re all quite a bit about wealth and opulence.

Then there was Niall Ferguson’s two-volume book “The House of Rothschild,” which I’m using quite a bit, but that’s very focused on banking. And the minutiae of loans. Also, it ends in 1999, which of courses leaves out the internet.

So there’s never really been a book about why this particular family is such a magnet for conspiracy theories. And, and why they’re always kind of the family that you turn to when you need a pop culture reference about the Jews and bringing about wealthy Jews.

Nowadays it’s not just the Rothschilds. We have another Jew that antisemites like to talk about: George Soros. Which one is the bigger kind of target of antisemitic conspiracy theories at this point?

It’s probably Soros just because he’s more visible. Soros does interviews and he has his name on a lot of things. His Open Society Foundations makes a lot of very public gifts to philanthropic organizations. The Rothschilds are much quieter. But a lot of the tropes are recycled, so you get tropes about the Rothschilds that are just reused for Soros.

 
Did you see the news that Israel has developed a new military system to shoot down missiles using laser beams? It sounds a lot like a Jewish space laser.

Oh is that true? [Laughs] I’ll have to add that to the book, life imitating conspiracy theory, as happens very often.

OUCH!
LILLEY: Poilievre shills conspiracy theories to sell memberships
Brian Lilley 
Toronto Sun

Candidate Pierre Poilievre makes a point at the Conservative Party of Canada English leadership debate in Edmonton Wednesday, May 11, 2022.

Stephen Harper wouldn’t be considered good enough for a cabinet position in a government led by Pierre Poilievre.

In his latest pitch for votes from the fringe, the Conservative leadership candidate said that he won’t accept ministers attending the annual summit of the World Economic Forum.

Of course, Poilievre’s campaign co-chair, John Baird should be fired since he attended and spoke for Canada at the WEF in 2014.

The World Economic Forum, founded 51 years ago by German academic Klaus Schwab, has held an annual summit drawing government and business leaders from around the world. Lately, though, it has become the focus of legitimate concerns over the influence it wields and the subject of several conspiracy theories.

Schwab’s call to have a “ Great Reset ” in the economy as part of the recovery from COVID-19 has been the focus for those who see the WEF as an organization with too much power. There are regular claims that the WEF controls governments, including Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, and fixes elections.

None of this is true, but it’s shared widely online, and it’s the people who buy into these conspiracy theories that Poilievre is trying to attract in his bid to win the leadership of the Conservative Party. He posted a video clip of one of his recent speeches where he said a Poilievre government wouldn’t allow participation at the annual summit.

“And that is why I have made it clear that my ministers in my government will be banned from participating in the World Economic Forum,” Poilievre said to great applause from the crowd.

“If you want to go to Davos, to that conference, make it a one-way ticket. But you can’t be part of our government and working for a policy agenda that is against the interests of our people.”


This video, and Poilievre’s new “policy” on the World Economic Forum, is nothing but garbage aimed at sucking in people who believe half-truths or outright lies.

When Stephen Harper or his ministers went to Davos, they weren’t working for a policy agenda that was against the people of Canada, they were selling Canada.

This is a conference attracting top business leaders, the kind of people who make investment decisions on where to locate plants and offices. Being there helps bring in new companies, new investment and new jobs to Canada.

“Canada’s rock-solid economic fundamentals make our country a top destination for global investors. At the WEF, we showed this to the world once again,” then-foreign affairs minister John Baird said after representing Canada at the WEF in 2014.

Was Baird working against the interests of Canada when he went?

The people Poilievre is pitching to with this message truly believe this shadowy organization has actual power in Canada and those who have attended have been indoctrinated by Schwab. I don’t think Stephen Harper was when he spoke to the forum about the need to control government debt, rein in spending and make decisions for future economic growth and prosperity.

In his 2012 address , Harper took his vision for where western democratic countries should be heading directly to those business and government leaders. Harper spoke of the investment climate his government was creating, the need to be able to export our energy to Asia and beyond, the need to reform social programs so that they were on a solid footing instead of following Europe’s path to fiscal instability.

Under a Poilievre government, Canada wouldn’t be selling itself on one of the most important stages in the world.

Poilievre is a smart man; he knows that what he’s saying on this file is nothing but gibberish. He doesn’t need to flirt with and encourage the acceptance of conspiracy theories to win the leadership, but that’s what he’s doing.

The Conservatives need a serious leader to challenge Trudeau and the Liberals. If Poilievre wants to be leader, he should smarten up and leave this garbage for the internet trolls.

Conservative Party member resigns membership over racist email

Richard Raycraft - 

A Conservative Party member who sent a racist email to the Patrick Brown leadership campaign has resigned his membership, ending the party's investigation into the matter.


© Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press

A man is silhouetted walking past a Conservative Party logo before the opening of the Party's national convention in Halifax on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. The party has ended an investigation into a racist email because the sender resigned their party membership.

The former party member expressed support for Nazism and Adolf Hitler and made racist remarks about several ethnic groups in the email sent last week to the Brown campaign, after the campaign denounced the racist "white replacement" conspiracy theory in an email.

The party launched the investigation in response to a complaint the Brown campaign filed. It informed leadership campaigns Sunday night about the resignation, according to public affairs strategist Chisholm Pothier, who is working for the Brown campaign.

Michelle Rempel Garner, a Conservative MP and co-chair of Brown's campaign who first brought the email to public attention, welcomed the news on Twitter.

"Glad to see that person resign their membership as a result of the investigation. If there's one thing we all should agree on, it's that there's no home for racism in @CPC_HQ," she tweeted.

The email writer stated in the email that they support Pierre Poilievre, Brown's rival for the Conservative leadership.

Poilievre said in a statement after the email was made public that the member should lose their party membership, and that racism has no place in his campaign or the party.

Buffalo mass shooting exposes ‘blind spots’ over white terrorism: expert

Amanda Connolly - Yesterday 
Global News
© AP Photo/Joshua Bessex


The Buffalo supermarket mass shooting by an apparent white supremacist lays bare what one expert is calling the "blind spots" in how authorities treat white and far-right terrorism.

In an interview with The West Block's Mercedes Stephenson, Queen's University assistant professor Amarnath Amarasingam said researchers studying violent extremism, like him, are learning from the plethora of records the alleged shooter left behind on how he prepared for the deadly attack.

"I can guarantee you, if this was a young Muslim or a young person of colour walking around a grocery store, taking pictures and drawing out a map of what the inside of the grocery store looks like, it would have resulted in a lot more than a security guard kind of wagging his finger at him," Amarasingam said.

"I think some of our blind spots of what white terrorism looks like, what far-right terrorism looks like, it needs to be reassessed. And that's why I think the Buffalo attack is quite interesting or important for future counterterrorism."

Read more:

Canada must be ‘vigilant’ about race replacement conspiracy threat: minister

Amarasingam, who is one of the leading Canadian researchers on radicalization and violent extremism, described the records left behind by the attacker, now in police custody, as "quite unique."

They include not only a so-called manifesto outlining his professed reasons for attacking the supermarket and killing 13 people, the majority of them Black, but also roughly 700 pages worth of what Amarasingam described as a sort of "diary" of daily postings on the gaming platform Discord.

Those postings describe killing a cat, surveilling the Tops grocery store that the shooter allegedly later attacked, and his user account being flagged by Discord when he tried to upload the manifesto of the far-right extremist behind the deadly Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings.

Read more:

What is white replacement theory? Police probe conspiracy’s role in Buffalo shooting

Police in the U.S. have described the supermarket attack as "racially motivated" and it is now being investigated as a federal hate crime. The Associated Press reported the alleged shooter had spent time on websites propagating the "great replacement" or "white replacement" conspiracy theory. That's the baseless conspiracy theory that governments in countries where white people have held political and demographic power are deliberately trying to displace white people by bringing in non-white immigrants.

Read more:

Buffalo mass shooting was act of domestic terrorism, attorney for victim’s family says

Long relegated to the fringe corners of the internet, the conspiracy is spreading online and gaining mainstream attention as far-right figures on cable and social media platforms spread it to their audiences.

Amarasingam said the theory's new prominence comes amid "a current of this kind of populist anxiety or demographic panic around what increased immigration means."

And Canada is not immune, he noted, adding the Quebec City mosque attack and the attack on a Muslim family in London, Ont., were influenced by similar rhetoric. One of the prominent figures in the Ottawa blockade earlier this year, Pat King, had also posted similarly-themed content.

"So this idea that kind of far-right presence doesn't exist in Canada, I think is a result of willful blindness or at least amnesia," he said.

Read more:

Canada’s spy service boosts attention to ‘ideological’ domestic extremism

Race replacement theory is part of the spectrum of far-right conspiracies raising growing concern among police and national security agencies, prompting them to focus on the threat posed by ideologically motivated violent extremism.

The term, often shortened to IMVE, refers to a broad swath of anti-immigrant, anti-government, antisemitic, and anti-women extremist ideologies with overlapping and deep roots in white supremacy.

IMVE is a major concern for Canadian national security authorities.

Global News reported in March that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service now spends as much time monitoring domestic ideological extremism as it does the threat posed by religious terrorist groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda.

A United Airlines worker picked a fight with a CFL player and it did not go well

Arun Srinivasan

YAHOO SPORTS

MAY 23,2022

A wild video has emerged of Calgary Stampeders receiver and ex-NFLer Brendan Langley brawling it out with a United Airlines employee. (Photo via Twitter/DMNTnasa)

(Warning: Article contains video with violent subject matter)

Calgary Stampeders wide receiver Brendan Langley was arrested and charged with simple assault Thursday after getting into a fight with a United Airlines employee.

The employee slapped Langley in the face, prompting Langley to look around and ensure that everyone saw that he wasn’t the instigator, before landing several punches that sent the employee over the airline counter. The employee then got up, with the right side of his face bloodied, and tried to engage Langley to fight him once again.

It's certainly a good thing for the airline worker that Langley decided not to re-engage. This was a beat down.

The airline employee was not arrested for his role in the scrap.

"He works at the airport and he assaulted me," Langley said.

The conflict reportedly started when Langley tried to transport his luggage by using a wheelchair, instead of the designated luggage carts.

Langley was a third-round pick of the Denver Broncos in 2017 but played sparingly, primarily on special teams. During his tenure with the Broncos, Langley was involved in the second of two infamous brawls between Aqib Talib and Michael Crabtree in a November 2017 game between the Broncos and then-Oakland Raiders.

The 27-year-old, who was initially drafted as a cornerback, converted to wide receiver and signed with the Stampeders in February.

Passenger’s punch knocks United Airlines worker through the counter, NJ video shows

Screengrab via @tigermelons on Twitter


Julia Marnin
Mon, May 23, 2022

In this article:

Brendan Langley
|WR|#13

A passenger’s powerful punch knocked a United Airlines worker through the ticket counter and bloodied his face at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey during a dispute, video shows.

“You want some more? He wants more,” the passenger is heard shouting after the worker gets up during the nearly minute-long clip shared to Twitter capturing the pair fighting. It is unclear what the brawl was about.

The ticketed passenger, identified as Brendan Langley, 27, of Georgia, was arrested after the May 19 incident resulted in the United Airlines customer service representative getting sent to the hospital, a Port Authority media representative confirmed to McClatchy News in a statement. Port Authority oversees transportation in New Jersey and New York.

Beforehand, a verbal argument occurred, and “during the dispute, a scuffle ensued, and the ticketed male passenger punched the United rep. in the face causing a laceration above his left eye,” the statement said.

Langley, who is a professional football player and wide receiver for the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders, was charged with simple assault, according to the Port Authority spokesperson.

The video clip begins with the fight already in motion with both men appearing to exchange slaps in the face. Then, Langley is seen repeatedly punching the worker’s face as the employee puts his fists up in apparent defense.

Ultimately, one of Langley’s punches sends the worker flying over the counter, causing his head to bleed, and he is seen hitting the ground, the video shows. After the worker gets back up, the clip ends with Langley appearing to walk away.

“United Airlines does not tolerate violence of any kind at our airports or on board our planes and we are working with local authorities in their investigation of this matter,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement provided to McClatchy News.

The employee has since been fired, the spokesperson said.

The Newark airport is roughly 13 miles west of New York City

Huawei ban won't solve the problem of Chinese spying on Canada, experts say

Anja Karadeglija - Saturday

© Provided by National Post“Just a simple ban on Huawei isn't going to fix (Canada's security vulnerabilities). China doesn’t need Huawei to spy on us.”

OTTAWA — Banning the use of equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in Canada’s 4G and 5G infrastructure will help make the country somewhat safer — but in no way solve the problem of potential espionage, security experts say.

The fact is that all telecommunications equipment has security vulnerabilities, says Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international relations at Carleton University.

“And just a simple ban on Huawei isn’t going to fix that. China doesn’t need Huawei to spy on us.”

On Thursday, the Liberal government announced that companies would have to strip Huawei and ZTE equipment from 5G networks by 2024 and 4G networks by 2027. Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters that Canadian telecoms won’t be “permitted to include in their networks products or services that put our national security at risk.” He said the ban would “make our network safer, not only for now but for generations to come.”

Christopher Parsons, a senior researcher at University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said the security benefits will have more to do with geo-political interests than cybersecurity. If Canada had continued using Huawei and ZTE equipment and they became dominant, that would have given the Chinese government leverage over Canada, he said.

But on the cybersecurity front, the Chinese government “will continue to be very effective in engaging in espionage and other operations against the government of Canada and other countries, regardless of the telecommunications network equipment they use,” Parsons said.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said she’d hoped the government would go as far as the U.S. and outright ban all of the company’s products, such as consumer items like cellphones.
Canada to ban Huawei from country's 5G, 4G networks, in line with Five Eyes allies
Terry Glavin: There’s no Huawei ‘ban’ until we get it in writing

Canadians who are wondering about their Huawei cellphone in the wake of Thursday’s decision should consider whether they’re likely to be targeted, Parsons said.

“If you’re a CSIS officer, probably not the best of ideas” to have a Huawei phone, he said. But if you’re someone with a regular job “and life in Canada, you’re probably not at any substantive risk.”

What Canada needs is a wider strategy to address cybersecurity issues, both Parsons and Carvin said.

“We need a strategy to better understand what Canada wants to do from a cybersecurity perspective,” and that strategy needs to intersect with Canada’s foreign policy goals, including our policy toward China, and an industrial strategy, Parsons said.

Parsons said Canada also needs a “way of doing a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the different equipment in our critical infrastructure,” such as telecom and banking.

In addition to announcing the ban Thursday, the government said it will introduce a legislative framework for protecting critical infrastructure in the finance, energy, telecom and transport sectors.

“We can’t just ban our way” into better cybersecurity, Carvin said. She said it appears that the government “is going to take this more comprehensive approach overall, and that’s good.”

But, she cautioned, Canada is going to have to act much more quickly in the future, instead of taking years to issue a decision like it did with Huawei.

Canada was the last of the Five Eyes alliance — which consists of Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand — to ban the equipment.

The federal Liberals first announced a security review of Huawei equipment in September 2018. For much of that time, a key factor in the delay was China’s use of hostage diplomacy, as China held two Canadians in prison in retaliation for Canada arresting Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the U.S. The two Michaels were released in September 2021.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement China “expresses its grave concerns and strong dissatisfaction” with the decision. The statement accused Canada of “acting in collusion with the United States to suppress Chinese enterprises” and called “Canada’s so-called security concerns… nothing but a cover for political manipulation.”

China could retaliate in a number of ways, experts said. For its part, the embassy warned that “China will evaluate this development in a comprehensive and serious manner and take all necessary measures to protect the legitimate and legal rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.”

Carvin said the worst-case scenario and “something I really would hope would not be the case, would be retaliation against Canadian citizens in particular.”

Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said it’s hard to say whether China will react immediately or wait to respond.

In addition to angry words and a potential “dressing down” to our diplomats in Beijing, China could take further trade actions, Hampson said.

He said when it comes to commercial ties with China, Canada has an imbalance of trade. “We buy a lot more from them than we sell to them. The selling job just got a lot harder,” he said.

The decision won’t be a “death knell” for Canada’s relationship with China, Hampson said, but a continuation of the trajectory that was on a downward slope.

“At the end of the day, we’re not going to see big dividends in trade and economic ties with China, and I think a lot of Canadian companies are understandably very wary now of doing business in China because of the fear that their corporate representatives could find themselves in jail.”

Church of Scotland general assembly votes to allow same-sex marriages


Severin Carrell 

Scotland editor -
The Guardian


The Church of Scotland has voted to allow same-sex marriages, after fresh warnings that its historical opposition had increased the church’s decline towards irrelevance.

The church’s general assembly, its decision-making body, voted by 274 to 136 on Monday to allow its ministers and deacons to opt in to officiate at same-sex weddings, ending a centuries-old prohibition.

The church’s legislation will be updated to remove references to a marriage taking place between a husband and wife, and refer instead to “parties”.

Some ministers said within minutes of the vote that they had immediately applied to be registered to carry out same-sex weddings, including the Rev James Bissett, a chaplain to the Royal Air Force’s air cadets.

The move was also welcomed by equalities campaigners and other church groups. The Scottish Churches Trust said the first weddings would take place soon.

The vote makes the Church of Scotland the largest church in the UK to allow gay marriages, increasing the split within the Protestant faith. It has already allowed gay ministers to marry.

Faced with the threat of a global revolt within the Anglican communion, the Church of England has consistently refused to approve same-sex marriages.

In 2017 the Scottish Episcopal church, which is Anglican, voted at its synod to approve same-sex marriages, becoming the first in Scotland to do so. The Church of Wales has indicated it may follow suit in several years’ time. Methodists, Quakers and the United Reform church already conduct ceremonies.

The measure had already been supported in an indicative vote by Church of Scotland presbyteries, which are its local governing bodies, but critics warned it could increase its internal rifts and leave the church open to legal action.

Related: Gay minister's appointment divides Church of Scotland

The Rev Scott Rennie, a minister at the centre of a bitter and protracted dispute in the church over the employment of openly gay clergy 13 years ago, told the general assembly he was heartened that despite the fear and uncertainty surrounding the proposal, it now had majority support.

“Marriage is a wonderful thing,” Rennie said. “My marriage to my husband, Dave, nurtures my life and my ministry, and frankly I do not think I could be a minister of this church without his love and support. It is always there in the background. Same-sex marriage is like opposite-sex marriage and it has its joys and sorrows, its glories and its tensions. It’s pretty normal, really.”

Another speaker, Craig Dobney, told the general assembly that its past opposition to gay marriages had alienated people: a primary school near his church had stopped using it after the church refused to appoint a gay minister. “I worry that our churches have become irrelevant to our communities,” he said.

There were warnings from opponents that the measure could expose ministers who opposed it to pressure and ostracism from equalities activists. Some are expected to call for stronger protection for traditionalists in church legislation at the general assembly on Wednesday.

The Rev Alistair Cook said he opposed the measure and would continue to refer to marriages taking place between a man and a woman. He said it was disingenuous to suggest this was a matter for individual ministers; this was church policy. “That is a deep theological change for the church,” he said.

The Rev Ben Thorp, another critic, said there would be continuing tensions for ministers and presbyteries, since more than a third of presbyteries had voted against it. Churches that refuse to participate risk being targeted by groups supportive of same-sex marriage, he said.

“It won’t be the end of the journey,” he said. “It won’t stop the decline of the church. It won’t make us suddenly more attractive to younger people. We will continue to be divided.”

The general assembly’s vote comes against a background of steeping declining numbers of church marriages in Scotland and a sharp fall in religious observance.

Swiss Re, UBS among founding buyers in carbon removal scheme

: Logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen in Zurich

Sun, May 22, 2022
By Susanna Twidale

LONDON (Reuters) - Insurance firm Swiss Re and banking giant UBS are among five founding buyers of credits from a scheme set up by a Swiss company to drive down the cost of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Even with pledges of huge reductions in emissions, many scientists believe extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by planting forests and using technology will be essential to meet global goals set under the Paris climate agreement to curb climate change.

Swiss carbon project developer South Pole's NextGen facility has committed to buying 1 million carbon removal credits from a range of projects by 2025 to help provide them with secure revenue streams and drive down the cost of the technologies.

“With this we can start moving these technologies down the cost curve, ideally the price levels you see today will come down in a similar way to what we have seen with solar PV,” South Pole CEO Renat Heuberger told Reuters in an interview.

The cost of solar PV modules for renewable solar power have fallen by around 90% since the end of 2009, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, as the technology and supply chains developed.

Current carbon removal technology costs can range from around $50 to $400 a ton, depending on the type of project.

Founding buyers in NextGen will include Boston Consulting Group, private banking firm LGT, shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), Swiss Re and UBS, South Pole said, without specifying how many credits each company had committed to, or at what price.

Many companies have set emissions reduction targets that will require them to purchase carbon offset or removal credits to compensate for emissions they are unable to cut themselves.

“This effort is a part of MOL’s broader goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” Takeshi Hashimoto, President & CEO of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd said in a statement.

(Reporting by Susanna Twidale; Editing by Mark Potter)

EXPLAINER: What are the key climate themes at Davos?



People walk in front of the congress center where the World Economic Forum take will place, on the eve of the event in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2022. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from May. 22 until May. 26, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

PETER PRENGAMAN
Sun, May 22, 2022

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — While the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine will be focuses of the World Economic Forum’s gathering of business and government leaders, so too will climate change. It's captured the world’s attention in unignorable and devastating ways.

The acceleration of rising temperatures, the ferocity and costliness of major weather events, and the impact, particularly on people in developing countries, have pushed the issue from one of science to something that touches every aspect of life, including (or, perhaps especially) business and economics.

Of the roughly 270 panels Monday through Thursday, one-third are about climate change or its direct effects. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate and Alok Sharma, president of last year's international climate conference COP26, are among the climate leaders expected in the Swiss resort town of Davos.

At the forum’s first in-person gathering in two years, the climate panels are as varied as the issue. They range from combating “eco-anxiety" to helping debt-ridden countries finance a renewable transition. Here's a look at some broader themes that are likely to emerge:

ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, GOVERNANCE

Several panels will wrestle with an approach to investing that considers the environment and other key factors. Known by the acronym ESG, it's become a force, with trillions of dollars invested in companies that meet certain criteria.

When it comes to climate change, ESG can be important. For individual investors all the way up to firms and government agencies that analyze how companies operate, disclosures and public declarations are paramount. They can be the basis of evaluating a company’s emissions, environmental impact and financial risks tied to climate change.

They are also controversial and raise questions: Should certain declarations be mandatory? Should they be standardized and regulated, and by whom? Or has the ESG movement already gone too far, ultimately hindering investment and doing little to rein in greenhouse gas emissions?

Viewpoints sometimes fall along political lines. In the U.S., many Republicans call them “woke,” while many on the left, particularly environmentalists and campaigners, argue that ramping up reporting and transparency could lead to real change.

Many managers of some of the world’s largest mutual funds have argued ESG is essential to evaluate risk. Just last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the approach had “been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

ENERGY TRANSITION AND ‘NET ZERO'

The world’s top climate scientists have warned that significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions this decade is necessary to minimize warming and avoid the most devastating effects to the planet. That will require major changes in how business is done, from the way products are produced to how they are transported.

Several panels will look at areas where businesses have successfully transitioned much of their energy portfolio to renewables, the role of finance and government to incentivize or mandate changes, and strategies to keep businesses accountable. Despite heightened consciousness and pledges by businesses, emissions are going up worldwide.

“Moving climate debate from ambition to delivery” is a title of one panel that sums up the enormous challenge.

Sessions will look at sectors, like decarbonizing shipping and aviation, renewable transition plans and the challenges of achieving them in countries like China and India. There will be discussion of strategies to ensure major shifts are inclusive and consider people in historically marginalized countries, which are feeling some of the most intense effects of climate change.

An important current through all the discussions will be identifying what “net zero” is — and isn’t — when looking at pledges from companies and countries. Moving away from fossil fuels like coal and oil to renewables like solar and wind can reduce emissions and get a company closer to goals of taking an equal amount of emissions out of the atmosphere as it puts in.

But a transition to renewables often makes up only a small part of company plans. Many rely on balancing their carbon footprint by investing in forest restoration or other projects. While better than nothing, experts note that depending on carbon offsets doesn’t represent a shift in business practices.

WAR IN UKRAINE AND THE FUTURE OF ENERGY

Russia's war in Ukraine will loom large at the conference. When it comes to climate change, the conflict raises two central questions: How should countries respond to energy shocks from reducing or being cut off from Russian oil and gas? And will the war hasten the transition to renewable energies or help fossil fuel companies maintain the status quo?

Since the war began, there has been no shortage of businesses, environmentalists and political leaders trying to influence the answers to those questions, which will carry over to Davos.

“Energy Security and the European Green Deal” is one panel where participants are expected to argue that the way forward is away from fossil fuels. But European countries, some of which are heavily reliant on Russia for energy, also are scrambling to find other sources of natural gas and oil to meet short-term needs.

While no sessions explicitly make the case for a doubling down on reliance on fossil fuels or expanding extraction or exploration, if the last few months are any guide, those points of view will certainly be present.

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Peter Prengaman is the Associated Press' global climate and environmental news director. Follow him here: http://twitter.com/peterprengaman

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Explosive Tonga volcano 'surprisingly intact'


Jonathan Amos -

 BBC Science Correspondent
Sun, May 22, 2022, 


Seabed change

The Tonga underwater volcano that produced a spectacular eruption in January remains astonishingly intact.

A New Zealand-led team has just finished mapping the flanks of the seamount, which many people thought might have been torn apart in the ferocity of the event.

But structurally, Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai hasn't changed that much.

The Tonga eruption produced the biggest atmospheric explosion recorded on Earth in more than a century.

It generated tsunamis across the Pacific and in other ocean basins around the world. It even lifted the clouds over the UK, 16,500km away. Mercifully, only a handful of people lost their lives in the kingdom of Tonga.
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New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric (NIWA) Research has now managed to get in close with a ship to map the post-eruption shape of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai (HTHH) and of the surrounding seafloor.

Professor snorkels over Tonga volcano


Tonga eruption was 'record atmospheric explosion'


Robot boat to map Tonga volcano aftermath

Although there's clearly been a lot of ash deposition and movement of sediment, the volcano continues to stand tall.

The expedition leader, NIWA marine geologist Kevin Mackay, said he was taken aback by what he'd seen in the Research Vessel (RV) Tangaroa's sonar data.

"Given the violence of the eruption on 15 January, I'd expected the edifice to either have collapsed or been blown apart, and this is not the case," he explained.

"While the volcano appeared intact, the seafloor showed some dramatic effects of the eruption. There is fine sandy mud and deep ash ripples as far as 50km away from the volcano, with gouged valleys and huge piles of sediment."

The Tangaroa in front of the two parts of the caldera rim that sit above the ocean surface

From its 22,000-sq-km survey, the Tangaroa team calculates that about 6 to 7 cubic km of material have been added to the seafloor.

This is ash and rock that was initially ejected by the volcano into the air but which then fell back down into the water and descended the flanks of the submarine mountain to run out over the ocean bottom.

These density, or pyroclastic, flows were the major factor in generating the tsunami waves that inundated local islands, Mr Mackay told BBC News.

The volcano and surrounding seafloor was last mapped in 2016

The 1.8km-high HTHH was last surveyed in 2016. Combining the previous data with Tangaroa's new information has allowed scientists to make a "difference map".

The deposition of all the new material is marked in red (see top image). Blue indicates where material has been lost. This is mostly from around the neck of the volcano. The researchers say 2 to 3 cubic km has come away from the upper portions of HTHH.

In addition to the sonar survey, the Tangaroa's crew also studied the local ocean ecosystem.

On seamounts to the south of HTHH, sealife continues to flourish

Unsurprisingly, the flanks of the volcano are now devoid of biology, but the team only had to travel about 15km to find fish and mussels thriving on other seamounts.

"Both of these examples imply a resilience of animal populations in the region," said NIWA fisheries expert Dr Malcolm Clark. "And this is important because it can give insights into how the eruption can affect the surrounding sealife and what the possible chances of recovery might be."

The researchers also tested the water column for physical and chemical characteristics, including temperature, nutrients and oxygen concentration. In places, the ash-fall has had a fertilisation effect and triggered plankton blooms. But the flip side is that researchers could identify, too, zones where oxygen in the water has become depleted.

The team took thousands of pictures and collected hundreds of samples during the cruise, including 115 sediment cores and 250kg of rock, some of which was newly formed in the eruption.

The RV Tangaroa did not survey directly over Hunga-Tonga's opening, or caldera.

This will be left to a robot boat developed by the UK company Sea-Kit International. The 12m uncrewed surface vessel, called Maxlimer, is currently in Singapore en route to Tongatapu, the main island in the Tongan archipelago.

Because the boat can be controlled at a distance, it will be permitted to operate for extended periods over the caldera. The caution is warranted because the volcano appears still to be active.

NIWA marine ecologist Dr Sarah Seabrook said this was evident from a persistent ash layer near the volcano at a depth of about 200m.

"Our initial analyses on the origin of the ash layer suggest that it is not a remnant of the January eruption, but may instead show the volcano is still venting. That is, it's actively releasing volcanic ash, albeit on a far smaller scale," she explained.

Sea-Kit's USV Maxlimer will fully map the caldera

The information from Maxlimer's multi-beam sonar equipment is expected to be particularly instructive. A naval ship that sailed across the caldera recently found the depth of water over the caldera had increased dramatically.

Pre-eruption there was only 150-200m of seawater. Post-eruption there is now 800m or more of water. HTHH's magma chamber was hollowed out.

"Maxlimer definitely has the ability to measure that deep," said Mr Mackay. "And what we're really hoping is that once we get a really accurate map of the caldera, we can confirm those volumes of material that we've already initially indicated."

The RV Tangaroa's month-long mapping project was funded by the Nippon Foundation of Japan and organised by NIWA, together with Seabed2030, which is an international effort to properly chart Earth's ocean floor.