GR8T NEWS

Federal judge restores protections for U.S. gray wolves

A federal judge Thursday, restored protections to the American gray wolf population under the Endangered Species Act, meaning they will no longer be hunted. 

Photo by Rain Carnation/Pixabay

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Thursday moved to once again protect American wolves under the Endangered Species Act, according to court records.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California made the ruling, overturning a 2020 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In November 2020, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed federal protections for the gray wolf population across most of the continental United States.

That delisting took effect in January 2021, leaving it up to individual states to manage their respective populations.

Some states quickly allowed open season on gray wolves, with Wisconsin culling its Canis lupus population by one-third during the initial hunting season.

A state judge temporarily blocked Wisconsin's plans to open a second hunt this past fall.

The Humane Society of the United States and a coalition of conservation organizations filed a lawsuit in January 2021 to have the animals' protections restored under the Endangered Species Act.

In the ruling, White found the government failed to assess threats to wolves across their entire range.

"The Service did not adequately consider threats to wolves outside of these core populations. Instead, the Service avoids analyzing these wolves by concluding, with little explanation or analysis, that wolves outside of the core populations are not necessary to the recovery of the species," reads the judge's ruling.

"The Court concludes the Service failed to adequately consider the threats to wolves outside of the core populations in the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains in delisting the entire species."

The Northern Rockies population of wolves is the lone unprotected wolf population in the United States.

Regional subspecies of the gray wolf were declared endangered by the federal government between 1966 and 1976.

"Today is a monumental victory for wolves who will now be protected from state-sponsored bloodbaths. After having yet another wolf delisting overturned in federal court, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should finally learn its lesson," Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Human Society of the United States, said in a statement on Thursday.

"Instead of continuing to devise convoluted excuses to strip these beloved animals of legal protections, the agency must develop a plan for meaningful recovery across the species' range and ensure that states will not decimate their wolf populations," Block said.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Facebook, Instagram are hot spots for fake Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel

By Elizabeth Culliford and Silvia Aloisi

NEW YORK/MILAN (Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta Platforms is struggling to stop counterfeiters from pushing fake luxury goods from Gucci to Chanel across its social media apps, according to research and interviews, as the company barrels into ecommerce.

Its platforms have emerged as hot sots for counterfeit offenders who exploit their range of social and private messaging tools to reach users, according to interviews with academics, industry groups and counterfeit investigators, who likened brands' attempts at policing services like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as a game of "whack-a-mole."

"Facebook and Instagram are the key marketplaces where counterfeit goods get sold to members of the public. It used to be eBay 10 years ago, and Amazon five years ago," said Benedict Hamilton, a managing director at Kroll, a private investigation company hired by brands hurt by counterfeiting and smuggling.

Research, led by social media analytics firm Ghost Data and shared exclusively with Reuters https://ghostdata.io/report/Upd-Meta-Counterfeit-Empire1221.pdf, showed counterfeiters hawking imitations of luxury brands including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Prada and Chanel.

It identified more than 26,000 active counterfeiters' accounts operating on Facebook in a June-October 2021 study, the first time its counterfeit research had focused on Meta's flagship app, and it found more than 20,000 active counterfeiters' accounts on Instagram, up from its count the previous year but down from a 2019 peak when they identified about 56,000 accounts. About 65% of the accounts found in 2021 were based in China, followed by 14% in Russia and 7.5% in Turkey.

Ghost Data is an Italian analytics firm founded by cybersecurity expert Andrea Stroppa, who is also a data analyst consultant for the World Economic Forum. The firm has a track record of exposing the use of social media by counterfeiters, Islamic State supporters and for digital propaganda.

A Reuters search of keywords identified dozens of Instagram accounts and Facebook posts that appeared to promote counterfeit goods, which Meta removed for violating its rules after Reuters flagged them.

Online commerce is a key priority for Meta, which has pushed new shopping features that could help grow its revenue as it faces pressures like ads tracking changes and sputtering user growth https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-owner-meta-forecasts-q1-revenue-below-estimates-2022-02-02, and has signaled a hard stance against counterfeiters. Instagram said luxury brands like Dior, Balenciaga and Versace had adopted shopping features on its app and said some like Oscar De La Renta and Balmain were using in-app checkout.

But users exploiting its platforms to sell fake goods present a persistent problem for the company, which also faces scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators about its content moderation.

"The sale of counterfeits and fraud is a problem that has always persisted with new technology," said a Meta company spokesperson in a statement. "We are getting better every day at stopping these sales and cracking down on fraudsters," the person added.

'PLAYING CATCH-UP'

Most buyers know they are not getting the real deal when they pay $100 for a handbag that retails for over $5,000. But harms include hits to brands' sales and reputation, potential safety issues of unregulated goods, and ties between counterfeiting and organized criminal activity, experts said.

Meta has joined ecommerce sites and online marketplaces in grappling with the sale of counterfeit goods. But unlike public listings on sites dedicated to shopping like eBay and Amazon.com, social platforms also provide offenders multiple channels to post in closed spaces, send private messages and use disappearing content like Instagram Stories, experts said.

"They're creating a lot of unique opportunities for counterfeiters to hide," said Lara Miller, vice president of corporate strategy at the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. "We're all playing catch-up."

Counterfeiters took advantage of features like WhatsApp product catalogs, which are unencrypted and available through the app's "business profile" option, to show their wares, the Ghost Data report said.

Ghost Data's Stroppa said he had seen an increasing trend of whole counterfeit transactions occurring on the company's platforms, rather than linking out to external sites.

Some high-end labels remain wary of the ability of a broad spectrum of major online platforms, from ecommerce sites to social apps, to deal with counterfeiters.

In 2020, Chanel, Lacoste and Gant left a European Commission initiative aimed at increasing cooperation between brands and sites including eBay, Alibaba and Facebook's Marketplace to fight counterfeiting, saying it was not effective.

Chanel finance chief, Philippe Blondiaux, said in an interview last year that Chanel, which only sells cosmetics and perfume online, did not believe Facebook or Instagram were "the right environment to sell luxury items," adding the brand wanted a "very protected" and intimate environment for its customers.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which estimated the global trade in counterfeit products was as much as $464 billion in 2019 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/74c81154-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/74c81154-en, has said a boom in ecommerce in 2020-21 led to massive growth in the supply of online counterfeit goods. Academics said the fraud had mushroomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, while legislation in the United States and European Union remained unable to combat it.

Chanel, Gucci and Prada said their fight against counterfeiters resulted in hundreds of thousands of social media posts taken down last year, but did not comment specifically on Meta's services. Vuitton and Fendi owner LVMH, which in a filing said it spent $33 million to fight counterfeiting in 2020, declined to comment.

According to a lawsuit Meta filed with Gucci last year, the platform has struggled since 2015 to shut down a woman in Moscow accused of selling fake goods on is services via a network of more than 150 accounts.

BATTLING COUNTERFEITERS

Meta having more user shopping data https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/facebook-expands-shops-whatsapp-marketplace-commerce-updates-2021-06-22 could help with ad targeting, filling an information vacuum left after Apple started letting owners of its devices block companies from accessing user information.

Meta legal directors told Reuters that cracking down on counterfeiters was key as its commerce plans ramped up. "As commerce has become a strategic priority for the company and as we've been building new shopping experiences, we've recognized that we want to make sure those experiences are safe and trusted for brands and for the users," Meta's director and associate general counsel for IP Mark Fiore said last summer.

Meta, which says it has 3.59 billion monthly active users across its apps, in October launched an updated tool for brands to search and report counterfeits in posts, ads or commerce features, and says it typically responds to complaints of such infringements within 24 hours.

In a recent report https://transparency.fb.com/data/intellectual-property/notice-and-takedown/facebook, the company said it removed 1.2 million pieces of counterfeit Facebook content, including accounts, reported to it from January to June 2021 and about half a million on Instagram. The company said in this period it also proactively removed 283 million pieces of Facebook content violating counterfeit or copyright infringement rules and about 3 million on Instagram, either before they were reported by brands or before they went live.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York and Silvia Aloisi in Milan; Editing by Kenneth Li, Vanessa O'Connell and Lisa Shumaker)

'Almost invisible' earthquake set off 2021 South Atlantic tsunami

Ian Randall For Mailonline - 

A global tsunami which originated in the South Atlantic last year before travelling more than 6,000 miles was caused by a shallow, 'nearly invisible' earthquake.

This is the conclusion of Caltech experts who set out to solve the mystery of how the tidal wave formed when, based on initial readings, such seemed impossible.

The far-reaching disturbance followed in the wake of an apparent magnitude 7.5 earthquake centred near the South Sandwich Islands that struck on August 12, 2021.

Yet its focus was 29 miles below the Earth's surface — too deep to trigger a tsunami — and the 249-mile-long rupture should have caused a much larger earthquake.

Taking a closer look at seismic recordings from the time, the team found that what had seemed to be one quake was in fact a series of five, spread over several minutes.

And the seismic waves from these events interfered with each other, creating something of a tangled web of data that obscured the third in the sequence.

This particular quake — a magnitude 8.2 event that struck just 9 miles below the Earth's surface — was, the researchers said, likely the source of the global tsunami.

In fact, they said, this particular quake accounted for some 70 per cent of all the energy released during the episode.

Fortunately, the resulting tsunami had become quite small by the time it reached distant shores, and the residents of the islands it did affect were mostly penguins.

However, the team said, the findings highlight the need to improve seismic monitoring to better deal with complex earthquakes and their associated hazards.


© Provided by Daily MailA global tsunami (depicted) which originated in the South Atlantic last year before travelling more than 6,000 miles was caused by a shallow, 'nearly invisible' earthquake


© Provided by Daily MailTaking a closer look at seismic recordings from the time, Caltech researchers found that what had seemed to be one quake was in fact a series of five (as depicted), spread over several minutes. The seismic waves from these events interfered with each other, obscuring the third in the sequence. This particular quake — a magnitude 8.2 event that struck just 9 miles below the Earth's surface — was, the researchers said, likely the source of the global tsunami

THE FIVE QUAKES


E1 — M 7.2 foreshock with duration 23s

E2 — M 7.2 foreshock, duration 19s

E3 — M 8.2 mainshock, duration 180s

E4 — M 7.6 aftershock, duration 26s

E5 — M7.7 aftershock, duration 50s

The study was undertaken by seismologist Zhe Jia and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology.

'The third event is special because it was huge, and it was silent,' Mr Jia explained.

'In the data we normally look at [for earthquake monitoring], it was almost invisible.'

Typically approaches to seismic monitoring typically focus on waves with short and medium periods only, the expert explained.

In fact, he noted, the shallow, magnitude 8.2 quake — which lasted for 180 seconds — only became clearly visible in the data when he filtered the waveforms down to those with a longer period of up to 500 seconds.

Even this approach wasn't quite enough on its own, however, to pick apart all the messy seismic signals generated in the episode.

'It's hard to find the second earthquake because it's buried in the first one,' Mr Jia explained.

'It's very seldom that complex earthquakes like this are observed. If we don’t use the right dataset, we cannot really see what was hidden inside,' he added.

The team developed a special algorithm to break down — or 'decompose' — the collected seismic observations from the five earthquakes into individual events.


© Provided by Daily MailThe third quake in the sequence accounted for some 70 per cent of the energy released during the episode. Fortunately, the resulting tsunami had become quite small by the time it reached distant shores (as depicted), and the residents of the islands it did affect were mostly penguins

According to Judith Hubbard, a geologist from the Earth Observatory of Singapore who was not involved in the present study, we need to improve our hazard predictions to account for the fact that these quake can cause unexpected tsunamis.

'With these complex earthquakes, the earthquake happens and we think, "Oh, that wasn't so big, we don't have to worry",' she explained.

'And then the tsunami hits and causes a lot of damage.'

'We need to rethink our way to mitigate earthquake-tsunami hazards,' agreed Mr Jia.

'To do that, we need to rapidly and accurately characterize the true size of big earthquakes, as well as their physical processes.'

According to both Mr Jia and Professor Hubbard, a long-term goal will be to automate the analyses of these large, complication seismic events, just as we already have for simple earthquakes.

'This study is a great example of how we can understand how these events work, and how we can detect them faster so we can have more warning in the future,' Professor Hubbard added.

'I think a lot of people are daunted by trying to work on events like this. That somebody was willing to really dig into the data to figure it out is really useful.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.Read more

CANADA

A little nervous’: Experts question politics behind lifting COVID-19 restrictions

Aya Al-Hakim 


As provinces across Canada start to lift COVID-19 restrictions, some experts are questioning whether public health decisions are being made based on medical data or politics.

Ontario's three-phase reopening plan that stretches into mid-March is underway, with proof of vaccination and masking to remain in place as capacity limits widen and more businesses reopen.

Read more:
COVID-19: Quebec announces staggered reopening plan through to mid-March

Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have also laid out plans to lift public COVID-19 health measures over the course of the next month or so.

Video: Reaction mixed after Saskatchewan announces plan to lift COVID-19 restrictions

But Saskatchewan and Alberta are aiming to end all COVID-19 restrictions.

Epidemiologist Timothy Sly says even though the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the mental health and lives of Canadians, it's still not reasonable enough to ignore scientific evidence.

"Hospital rates, ICU rates, wastewater rates, if they're going down and they have been for the last three weeks, then we can look forward to taking a few more steps (in lifting restrictions)," said Sly.

Video: Alberta drops mask mandate for kids, education minister says boards can’t enforce their own

But in the Prairies, the hospitalizations have only just started to decline.

"If politics chooses not to listen to that, then I think we're a little nervous," said Sly.

As of Tuesday, there were 1,623 people in hospital with COVID-19, according to Alberta Health, with 129 in intensive care.

Read more:
COVID-19: Alberta doctors, mayors react to Kenney removing vaccine passport, restrictions

Dr. Noel Gibney, professor emeritus in the department of critical care medicine at the University of Alberta, said the removal of COVID-19 restrictions is premature.

“If we look back at some of the previous waves, the government used hospitalization numbers of 400 or 500 to make decisions about what public health measures would be added or removed,” Gibney explained on Wednesday in an interview with Global News.

“We’re actually significantly above those numbers now, and our system remains under profound pressure.”

On Tuesday, Saskatchewan was the first province to announce it would be ending the use of COVID-19 vaccine passports beginning on Feb. 14, with facemasks in indoor public settings to lift by end of February.

“Proof of vaccination has been an effective policy, but its effectiveness has run its course,” said Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe on Tuesday.

“The benefits no longer outweigh the costs. It’s time to heal the divisions over vaccination in our families, in our communities and in our province. It’s time for proof of vaccination requirements to end," he added.

Alberta then followed by announcing its COVID-19 vaccine passport program would end first thing Wednesday. Almost all public health restrictions would be lifted by March 1 — including masking — if hospitalizations continue to improve.

At a news conference, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Tuesday that while the restrictions exemption program (REP) served its purpose of increasing vaccination rates, it is no longer an effective tool for doing so and no longer needed, especially with so many vaccinated people still contracting the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19.

Read more:
B.C. throne speech lays out post-pandemic plans, including child care and safe workplaces

Ontario’s health minister Christine Elliot said on Wednesday that the province is “not in the clear” to remove COVID-19 vaccine passports that are required to enter some indoor public settings such as gyms and restaurants or to drop the mask mandate.

“We have no plans, currently, to drop the passport vaccination situation or masking,” Elliot said. “We always said that we were going to take a very cautious, phased, prudent approach to opening up and that’s the path that we’re going to follow.”

On Wednesday, Ontario reported another drop in hospitalizations, with 2,059 people with COVID in hospitals and 449 in intensive care units. This is down from a week ago at 2,939 hospitalizations with 555 in ICU. Case counts, test positivity and wastewater signal have also been on the downward trend, Elliott said.

A clinical professor in the School of Population & Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Hoption Cann, said ending COVID-19 restrictions is a "political decision."

Read more:
COVID-19: Quebec reports 56 more deaths, another drop in hospitalizations

He also said there are both scientific and economic issues for politicians to look at and try to balance.

"Economically, there's been a lot of harm due to lockdowns during the pandemic. So as a politician, they kind of have to balance the two things. And it's not an easy balance to make," Cann said.

As provinces ease restrictions, he believes that potentially the number of infections could go up again, but it's hard to predict at this time.

"What we do know is having two doses and particularly three doses offers very good protection against being hospitalized or dying from this infection. So an easing up of restrictions is one thing, but you still have to try and promote those people to get a triple dose or get vaccinated if they haven't been," said Cann.

With some provinces moving faster than others, Sly says provinces need to respond thoughtfully based on the data they have, like the number of hospitalizations and new cases, and not rush to remove all of the COVID-19 mandates on a single date.

"We need to look at the local situation and say, how are we responding sensibly and responsibly or are we just having a knee-jerk reaction due to some ideology," said Sly.

Sly also acknowledged that there are many sides to the discussions that aren't just based on epidemiology, stating that "we cannot have a future dictated by a scientist without any regard at all to the fallout."

"We need a roundtable discussion. But when we have policies that seem to be made (because a political party) is looking for the popular vote or not really listening to what's being said, then it is a little too soon to ease restrictions," said Sly. "Evidence-based decision-making is the key here."

When Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced plans to lift COVID-19 restrictions in phases on Tuesday, he said, “It’s time for us to learn to live with COVID-19,” listing the challenges of the pandemic: disrupting livelihoods, dividing people and hurting mental health.

In late January, Ontario Premier Doug Ford also said the province needs to “learn to live with” COVID-19.

Beginning on Jan. 31, social gatherings were increased to a maximum of 10 people indoors, and 25 outdoors.

Restaurants, bars, retail stores, malls, gyms, cinemas and other indoor public settings were also allowed to open to a 50 per cent capacity.

Video: COVID-19: Ontario to roll out free rapid tests in grocery stores, pharmacies

The province is planning to lift more measures on Feb 21, and again on March 14.

One of the first countries to choose to "live with COVID" is Denmark, which is now seeing a record number of hospitalizations.

Although ICU numbers remain low, the country is registering a similar number of COVID-19 deaths as in previous waves of the pandemic.

"If we make a wrong move and because it's politically expedient to do so, we could be rewarded by a sudden surge of cases again, mainly among the unvaccinated," said Sly.

— with files from Jamie Mauracher, Kaylen Small, and Gabby Rodrigues

$68 for mittens? Team Canada fans cry foul over Lululemon prices for official Olympic gear

Pete Evans - POSTMEDIA

Lululemon may be famous for selling pricy, form-fitting yoga pants, but the price point of the Vancouver company's official Olympic gear isn't sitting right with many customers.

The athleisure brand made a splash when it signed an exclusive deal to outfit Canada's Olympic team at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. For decades, Team Canada was outfitted by iconic Canadian brands Roots, then HBC at various Games, before the yoga chain stepped up to buy the rights to make and sell the official swag last fall.

While the look and feel of the clothes themselves have earned glowing reviews, some consumers are having a hard time getting past their pricing.

A pair of red mittens emblazoned with the letters CAN over the fingers sell for $68. That's drawing unfavourable comparisons with the iconic red and white maple leaf mittens that were a runaway hit for previous sponsor HBC, which sold for $10 a pair during the 2010 Games in Vancouver.


© Evan Mitsui/CBC

HBC's then-CEO Bonnie Brooks holds up a pair of the company's iconic Olympic mittens in 2014. They were a runaway hit.

This year, for $8, you can buy a Team Canada hair scrunchie. For $14, you can get some branded hair ties. The price point for larger garments goes up quickly from there, topping out at almost $500 for a parka.
Makes sense for aspirational brand, says expert

Many Canadians have taken their griping online this week, with complaints that the price point for the Olympic collection is well above what average Canadians can afford

But Cheri Bradish, who teaches sports marketing at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, says the strategy makes perfect sense for an aspirational brand such as Lululemon.

"The Lululemon approach is a bit more upscale, a bit more higher end," Bradish told CBC News in an interview.

While she was not party to the negotiations, she suspects the company paid in the tens of millions of dollars for the rights to be the Olympic supplier, so they would want a return on investment.

"I think Lululemon very much knows who they are and what they want to position on the brand," Bradish said.

For its part, the company says the higher prices reflect the quality of its Olympic products.

"We are committed to making the highest-quality products — not only for Team Canada but for all our guests," a spokesperson for the company told CBC News in an emailed statement.

"As such, our products are developed with cutting-edge fabrics and innovative design techniques that deliver unparalleled feel, fit and performance. We price our products based on our commitment to the value of innovation, technology, premium materials, functionality and detail."
'It lasts'

Outside a Lululemon store in Toronto, shopper Michael Bertorelli says while he likes that Lululemon is a Canadian company and generally offers high-quality products, he does wish Canadians had access to a few more inexpensive options.

"I think it's good to have options so that everyone can get involved, and everyone can participate," he told CBC. "But if it's just one item that's really high, it's going to push a lot of people away."

He's among the many who bought the iconic HBC mitten from previous Games: "I have two pairs, and I still use them."

Another shopper, Victoria Day, said that while she had no plans to buy any of the Olympic gear, the prices make sense since the store has such a premium product.

"The quality at Lululemon is unbelievable," she said. "Everybody knows that you purchase something from Lululemon and it lasts you … years. You go somewhere else, you purchase something from the Olympics, it's not as good quality."
Canada isn't the main target

Regardless of what shoppers in Canada think, they're probably not the company's primary concern, said analyst David Swartz with investment research firm Morningstar.

While the company was founded in Vancouver and is still headquartered there, Canada is not a major growth market for the company. The company currently has around 60 stores across Canada and isn't projected to add or subtract very many from that total in the near future.

That means that the Canadian market may soon become a tiny focus for a Canadian company with global ambitions, one that's on track to have about 900 stores around the world in less than a decade, according to Swartz.

"The fact, that they're expensive is not surprising," he said. "Lululemon charges premium prices across the board so it's not going to cheapen its brand by selling discount stuff."

He notes that the price tag for official Team Canada socks, at $28, isn't too far off the $24 Lululemon charges for a regular pair of performance socks. That is what makes the collection more like a marketing expense than a product, he said.

"It's not a profit centre."

Far more important for Lululemon than whatever sales it generates in Canada is the impression the clothes will have on the market it is really targeting: China.

"A lot of the future growth of the company is going to come from Asia," he said.

Two Canadian gangsters' big plans as narco bosses undone by undercover sting down under

Two Canadian gangsters with big plans for an international narco empire worked cautiously, so much so they launched aerial drones to check for police surveillance before meeting to swap cash for drugs.


© Provided by National Post

Van Hieu Le and his partner, another Canadian man, are in prison in Australia after their growing international cocaine smuggling ring was infiltrated by an undercover police officer who met with them in countries around the world.

 (PHOTO CREDIT: Australian Federal Police)

Adrian Humphreys - POSTMEDIA


They still missed a trick.

Over 18 months of vetting a new partner at face-to-face meetings in restaurants and bars in Thailand, Panama, Colombia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, they didn’t realize he was not the gangland gatekeeper he appeared to be.

He was an undercover police officer from Australia.

By the time that startling fact was revealed, it was over for the burgeoning narco boss, Van Hieu Le, and his right-hand man, Barry Ho, along with nine others in their drugs and dirty money ring.

Le and Ho, both 34 and childhood friends from British Columbia, have been convicted in Australia for their leading roles in a multi-million-dollar network involving corrupt officials, crooked businessmen, Colombian cocaine producers, Vietnamese money launderers and the sophisticated logistics of moving cocaine half-way around the world.


Right-hand man, Barry Ho. (PHOTO CREDIT: Australian Federal Police)

On Jan. 19, in a courtroom in Melbourne, Australia, Le was found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of border-controlled drugs and sentenced to 17 years in prison, with no chance of parole for 12 years. He also forfeited his Honda SUV.

On the same day, Ho was found guilty of the same charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison, with no chance of parole for 10 years and four months.

Both men are 34 years old.

The pair are the last to be convicted in a vast Australian police operation that thoroughly penetrated their gang, and then shut it down in 2017 with a series of raids and arrests that scooped up suspects, drugs and money.

Le, from Burnaby, and Ho, from Vancouver, have been friends since they were teens.

They had been criminally active together for 15 years, with Le being the senior figure, as they slowly built an enterprise with an impressive global footprint, sources said.

They used Panama as their fulcrum.

Not everything went smoothly for them. They learned an underworld reality: that gangsters are not always honest brokers.

In August 2016, they paid traffickers in Panama to load 100 kilos of cocaine into a shipping container, but the hired help decided to steal the drugs instead. The Canadians flew to Australia to collect their anticipated load but found nothing.

With help from a successful businessman in Australia, and others, they figured things out. They dealt directly with a Colombian cocaine producer and acted as both a broker for others and as a direct importer for themselves, according to sources with knowledge of the case.

They paid government officials to help them, sometimes with cash and sometimes with cocaine, as drugs were sent out by air and sea, using the names and addresses of legitimate companies to avert suspicion from customs.

But as they expanded their network, the Australian undercover agent tracked everything he could — from their source for drugs to how they moved their money.

Before their arrests, Le and Ho arranged for three heavy duffel bags to be slipped into a shipping container in Panama, hidden among legitimate cargo being sent to a frequent importer, and then a replica of the container’s seal put in place. The container was loaded onto the Spirit of Shanghai, as one of hundreds of containers aboard the enormous transport ship headed for Melbourne, Australia’s busiest port.

The ship arrived on June 26, 2017, and the container was sent for inspection.

Each of the black bags held 26 bricks of cocaine that together weighed 92 kilos. Police estimated the load had a value of about $30 million Australian dollars.


Australian money seized by a police taskforce. (PHOTO CREDIT: Australian Federal Police)

The find sparked 12 police raids across Melbourne, as well as arrests in other countries.

About $580,000 in Australian cash was seized in the raids, mostly in neatly stacked $50 bills. Authorities seized property, cash and other assets worth $2.6 million Australian dollars, according to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). That is worth about C$2.3 million.

Two other Canadians were arrested alongside Le and Ho in the multi-national cast of the plot. The two men were charged the month before with trafficking 22 kilograms of cocaine.


Some of the cocaine bricks seized in Australia. (PHOTO CREDIT: Australian Federal Police)

They were joined by a British man, six Australian men and a Vietnamese woman, police said. Some were arrested abroad and extradited to face trial; some charged for drug offences and some for money laundering.

All but one, a Canadian man, were convicted.

Between all the members of the gang, police said, prison sentences totalled 98 years.

“This result sends a strong message to illicit organized criminal groups,” said AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Chris Salmon. He said international police partnerships were key to the operation’s success.

There have been several high-profile Canadians found to be in the thick of drug smuggling into Australia.

In 2018, two Canadian women were caught with suitcases full of cocaine on a cruise ship that stopped in Australia. Their $30 million load was the largest found on a passenger ship in the country, but a trove of glamor photos the two women shared on social media along their luxurious trip sent the story viral.

In 2017, a National Post investigation exposed Yaroslav Pastukhov, a music editor at Vice Media better known under the name Slava Pastuk, for recruiting young musicians, models and former Vice interns to work as drug mules to smuggle coke in their luggage on flights to Australia.

Four Canadians and an American were caught at Sydney airport with nearly 40 kilos of coke in their suitcases. All were convicted, and Pastukhov himself was convicted in Canada in 2019.

Australia's 2019-20 catastrophic bushfire season affected 80% of Australians

Randi Mann - 
The Weather Network

The record-breaking Australian bushfire season charred more than 20 per cent of the country's forests. The fires claimed the lives of 479 people, millions of animals, and 9,352 buildings. Between the fires and the smoke, over 80 per cent of the country's population was affected. The country's 2019-20 bushfire season came to be known as Black Summer.House destroyed in Hillville, NSW on 12 November 2019. Courtesy Raginginsanity/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

The fires spanned from June 2019 to May 2020, peaking in January 2020. Aside from the fires' record-breaking size, burning approximately 18,636,079 hectares, scientists noted the immense amount of smoke that was circumnavigating the globe.

By Jan. 7, 2020, the smoke moved into South America, 12,070 km away from Australia. The smoke cloud stayed intact for three months, making its way around the world before returning close to where it originated.



Canadian researchers examined images from NASA satellites and determined that the smoke plume was three times the size of any previously recorded cloud.

The financial cost of the bushfires amounted to A$103 billion, making it Australia's costliest natural disaster to date.


© Provided by The Weather Network

Australia's devastating fires have generated spectacular pyro-clusters like the one seen in this image. These large clouds of vertical development, help inject particles and gases such as carbon dioxide at high altitudes. Source: NASA

Within the unprecedented and catastrophic year-long event, millions of people were affected, creating many substories.

On Jan. 19, 2020, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) needed to make the call if the 2020 Australian Open, which was scheduled to take place between Jan. 20 and Feb. 2, could proceed despite the poor air quality.

The Grand Slam tennis tournament took place at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Victoria. At the time, the air quality in the city was the worst in the world.

Some games were delayed due to poor air quality, but the tournament ultimately proceeded. Some players had to call for medical timeouts. Dalila Jakupović experienced a coughing fit due to the poor air quality, and she was forced to retire.


Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and other leading players helped raise more than $3.5 million for bushfire relief.

To hear more about Australia's 2019-2020 bushfire season, and its impacts, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."

Thumbnail photo: 3-D visualization of Australia's Bushfire. Courtesy of Anthony Hearey

How Museum Curator Ariana Curtis Makes Sure Afro-Latinx History Stays Alive

Janel Martinez - Wednesday
Refinery29

Once a year, the U.S. acknowledges the egregious pay gap in which Latinas earn just 67 cents for every dollar a non-Latinx white man makes. It’s time we interrogate this fact year-round.The L-Suite examines the diverse ways in which Latinx professionals have built their careers, how they’ve navigated notoriously disruptive roadblocks, and how they’re attempting to dismantle these obstacles for the rest of their communities. This month, we’re talking with trained scholar and one of the few Black Latinx curators at the Smithsonian, Ariana Curtis, about forging your own career path, centering community within institutions, and persevering through challenges.

Museum spaces have been taken to task over their lack of diversity. The 2018 Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey reported that 12% of museum leadership positions were held by people of color, a slight 1% bump from the 2015 results. That year, 84% of curators, conservators, educators, and leadership were white, while 4% were Black and 3% were Latinx. For non-white museum workers and visitors, this exclusion sends a clear message: Black and Latinx experiences and expertise aren’t valued.

While alarming, the overwhelming whiteness of museums isn’t surprising. In fact, the origins of many of the United States’ most distinguished institutions, from government to higher education, are rooted in white supremacy. While racial equity, diversity, and inclusion have become accelerated action items for a number of institutions and cultural heritage spaces, particularly in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, they’ve always been priorities for non-white cultural workers inside the archives and collections.

This is the case with Ariana Curtis. As a graduate student at American University studying race, gender, and social justice, Curtis regularly frequented museums and galleries for leisure. While she enjoyed the exhibits, programs, and scholarly talks at museums in the DMV area, as an Afro-Latina, she didn’t expect to see herself reflected within these spaces. Then she met Michelle Wilkinson, a Black curator who inserted Blackness on the walls of New York’s The Studio Museum and Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Museums became more than just windows to peek into other worlds; they were spaces for community-centered, publicly accessible work that affirms and educates her communities about their identities, histories, and cultures. Just like that, the trained anthropologist and researcher swapped policy work for museums.

“What I found missing for me from policy was public accountability, which I think museum work really does present,” Curtis tells Refinery29 Somos. “It’s not just that people can access your work; it’s that they can respond to it, that they can think about it, that they can build programs around it, and that there are actual conversations that people have around what they’re seeing and what they’re feeling.”

In 2013, Curtis — who is of African American and Afro-Panamanian descent — became a curator of Latino Studies at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. At Anacostia, Curtis led public programming and curated two bilingual exhibitions: Gateways/Portales, which explored the experiences of Latinx immigrants in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and parts of North Carolina, and Bridging the Americas, a look at home and belonging in and in-between Panama and DC.

This experience led the Fulbright scholar to become the first curator of Latinx Studies at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in 2017 — only three months after the museum opened. Curtis has always been intentional about the role and what her title entails. “It’s not curator of Afro-Latinx Studies. It’s Latinx Studies. It’s Latinidad through an African-American lens,” she says. “Blackness is not homogeneous, so we need to honor that diversity. We need to honor Latinx diversity. We need to honor relationships between culture and between people.”

While the systemic bias and barriers that exist in museums won’t disappear overnight, it’s trailblazers like Curtis who are committed to reforming homogeneous environments through education, leadership, and honest conversations. From affirming the communities she represents to pushing forward despite pushbacks, Curtis shares her story and offers advice for Latinas navigating historically white (and racist) institutions.

Define your own path

Education isn’t exclusive to academic spaces. As Curtis realized when shifting from policy to museum work, she could apply her specialization in anthropology to various fields and share her insight through different mediums. Today, the Springfield, Massachusetts native does this as a curator for the Smithsonian, collecting in five key areas: U.S. Latinxs, U.S. Afro-Latinxs, African Americans & Latinxs, the African Diaspora in Latin America, and African American migrations to and engagements with Latin America.

In 2020, she was offered a groundbreaking opportunity as Director of Content of Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past, a space for dialogue about race and racism at the Smithsonian, while being able to continue her curatorial work.

“In this time of racial protest, I was coming out of my comfortable, Black-dominant space and saying, ‘I’m going to really experience the Smithsonian as a predominantly white institution and talk about institutional racism,’” Curtis says. “‘I’m going to figure out what our role as an institution is in these ongoing conversations on this history that we have collected but perhaps not interpreted in this way. I’m going to really think about why and how the National Museum of African American History and Culture exists, and also how it exists in combination with our Asian Pacific American Center, with our Latino Center, with the National Museum of the American Indian, with the changes that they are really trying to make at the National Museum of American History.’”

With each role the curator assumes, she’s also adamant about defining her work and its many intersections. Refusing to be pigeonholed, she finds encouragement through an Audre Lorde quote that hangs in her office: “I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.” It resonates with Curtis. Although she is a proud Afro-Latina, her work is expansive and doesn’t only speak to that aspect of her identity.

Center community, even within institutional spaces

A museum worker’s decision on what to (or not to) include within collections has lasting effects. According to a Williams College study, 85.4% of the works in the collections of 18 major U.S. museums are created by white artists and, more specifically, 87.4% are by men. The survey results also show that African-American artists constitute a sad, yet unsurprising, 1.2% of the works. Meanwhile, Hispanic and Latinx artists make up 2.8% of the artists, and Asian artists account for 9%.

For Curtis, there’s a shared responsibility that exists between institutions and curators to consider the specificity of the communities that they work within, including the cultural objects they choose to display. Understanding the history of the Anacostia Community Museum — a local space highlighting Black American populations in Washington, DC — as well as the realities of the vast Latinx communities (particularly Central Americans) that live in the DMV area and how these cultures intersect in the capital, she was determined to reflect those lived experiences within her work. Though there were no permanent exhibits, the award-winning curator began brainstorming ways to use the museum’s existing collections and opportunities to build upon others. The impact was eminent. While displaying Bridging the Americas, an exhibit that opened in 2015 presenting archival and contemporary narratives of home, identities, and communities, docents and community members alike came up to Curtis to share that they were of Panamanian descent. Up until that point, they hadn’t expressed that part of their identity; however, seeing themselves in the space allowed for that connection to be made.

“Being able to create these spaces of belonging where people can articulate the multiple identities they have is so important,” she says. “I do it as often and as publicly as possible, so that other people can feel comfortable either claiming or not claiming.”

Push forward despite pushback

Even in the most supportive work environments, asserting yourself as a Black woman may have you rethinking your choice of words. When it comes to differences of opinions, how you articulate your point is often more effective than what you say, leaving some to reconsider even entertaining an important (but possibly career-altering) conversation.

Curtis is no stranger to spearheading these necessary and uncomfortable discussions. However, now that she’s responsible for directing content about race and racism for the Smithsonian, her discourse has an institution-wide impact. Such was the case when the Black Latinas Know founding member insisted the institution should explicitly say racism, not just race, in their language around racial inequality. While most of Curtis’ colleagues respect her authority and support her professional training, the depths at which they understand systematic racism is limited. Understanding that even the way language is structured can create barriers to expressing a person’s full humanity, she’s intentional with her words. “With this initiative for racial equality, if we are serious about change, we have to name what we want to change,” Curtis says.

With different lived experiences present in this emotionally charged work, she adds, “it’s impossible for it to not feel personal at times.” But no matter the conversation, or resistance to it, she’s committed to pushing through. As she prepares for tough conversations, she often leans on the words of scholars like Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks, Margaret Mead, and Sonia Sanchez. Another Lorde quote that eases her fears: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

How critical race theory sparked controversy in the U.S. and influenced Canadian education

Tom Blackwell - POSTMEDIA -Monday

A draft blueprint for teaching Grade 2 and 3 students about racism at an Ontario school board offers staff some eye-opening background information.


© Provided by National Post

A rally, promoted by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and in opposition to U.S. President Joe Biden, in the Brandon Township village of Ortonville, Michigan, U.S., on Nov. 20, 2021.

“Race is a made-up social construct to uphold European and white standards,” states the guideline , “and not an actual biological fact.”

The instructions go on to suggest teachers in the Hamilton Wentworth board be ready to discuss “the myth of white supremacy” and related topics with their primary pupils.

South of the border in a growing number of Republican states, such ideas would be considered literally unlawful, the target of new legislation that restricts how race is talked about in the classroom.

The concepts are often associated with critical race theory (CRT), a once-obscure school of academic thought that suggests racism is baked into laws and official policy — and that has become a red-hot battleground in America’s culture wars.

CRT has not only prompted legislation to regulate racism education in several states but is a frequent target on right-wing news channels and has been credited with helping Republican Glenn Youngkin win November’s race for Virginia governor.

“We are building the most sophisticated political movement in America — and we have just begun,” Chris Rufo, the conservative think-tank analyst credited with shoving CRT to the political front lines, wrote after Youngkin’s victory .

Meanwhile, the ideas — couched in sometimes-provocative social-science vernacular — have more quietly gained traction in Canada.

A few of the country’s largest school boards have adopted the language in their campaigns against discrimination, as have parts of the federal civil service in anti-racism training.

But even as critical race theory fills headlines in the U.S., its basic tenets are often misunderstood or misconstrued, merging with a more general opposition to addressing racism and other contentious social issues in American schools.

One typical example of those state laws bars lessons that cause students “discomfort, guilt (or) anguish” because of their race or sex.

And Rufo of the Manhattan Institute all but admitted CRT was being wielded as a political cudgel, tweeting in March that he was trying to make the phrase “toxic.” “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” he wrote.

The “moral panic” that’s emerged around the issue in the U.S., at least, is no accident, says Joshua Sealy-Harrington, a professor and CRT scholar at Ryerson University’s Lincoln Alexander Law School.

“It’s a well-funded and well-orchestrated political campaign.”

At the same time, though, liberal American media sometimes dismiss criticism of the concepts out of hand, without exploring CRT’s more controversial elements.

And it’s not solely partisan strategists with their eyes on the non-stop U.S. election cycle voicing concern. Suzanna Sherry of the Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville co-authored a book in 1997 — Beyond All Reason — that suggested CRT was an attack on Enlightenment ideals like merit and objectivity.

“My views on CRT remain similar but more negative now that it has spread beyond the ivory tower and into the population at large,” she said by email recently.

In Canada the concepts have sparked minimal controversy, and little discussion among the broader public.

Sujith Xavier, a law professor at the University of Windsor who applies CRT in his research , argues that Canadians have in a way long been exposed to the pillars underpinning critical race theory.

The familiar concept of systemic racism is closely related.

And policies like employment equity and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ equality section — which expressly permits affirmative action programs — respond to the concerns of critical-race theorists and have been part of Canadian law and even the constitution for years, he noted.

“It’s always been here,” says Xavier.



Video: Seeking Indigenous reconciliation through education (Global News)





Seeking Indigenous reconciliation through education

Even so, some Canadians might find its doctrines a challenging departure from more conventional approaches to racism. Or they might simply be wondering, “What is CRT, exactly?”

The theory emerged in the mid-1970s at Harvard University and other U.S. campuses, as academics concluded that advances brought about by the civil rights movement had stalled and new thinking was needed to combat “subtler forms of racism,” according to a leading primer on the topic by professors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.

One of the key tenets is that racism is “ordinary,” not an aberration, and that legal systems effectively promote the supremacy of white people over other races, even if their stated goal is equality.

Another is that colour blindness — the notion that everyone should be treated the same regardless of race — is itself a form of racism as it ignores the social and legal factors that can disadvantage people of colour. The Hamilton board’s draft Grade 2-3 lesson guidelines say their aim is to negate the “insidious” colour-blind practice “ by attempting to bring race into the conversation in primary classrooms.”

The theory also posits that race is not biological, but a social construct, again created by Europeans to assert their superiority and justify colonialism. Indeed, aside from the obvious physical differences, human genetics are identical between races, theorists note.

And CRT criticizes liberal notions like the merit principle and constitutional neutrality, saying they assume wrongly that people of all races are on a level playing field when applying for jobs, for instance, or encountering the legal system.

The degree to which the ideas have been implemented in the U.S. or anywhere else is a matter of debate. But after Rufo went on Fox News in September of last year to condemn the concepts, then-President Donald Trump banned federal funding of any programs that mention CRT, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

It’s since become a rallying cry for Republicans across America, with Youngkin quickly outlawing CRT in schools, saying “what we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race.”

In Ontario, at least, some large school boards have recently taken on ideas that form part of critical race theory, though largely without referencing the term.

Two of those boards — in Toronto and neighbouring York region — did not respond to requests for comment. But their initiatives appear partly driven by statistics that show poor outcomes for Black students, whose rates of high school suspension and dropping out are as much as twice those of white students.

“Racialized children are living in a white supremacist culture, where all aspects of themselves are devalued,” states a Toronto District School Board tip-sheet for parents on discussing racism with their children. “So it is essential that this culture is deconstructed and challenged every day.”

An elementary teacher in the board said the system has promoted teaching of such concepts especially forcefully since the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.

“This is all we talk about at staff meetings, pretty much,” said the teacher, who is not authorized to discuss the matter and asked not to be named. “There’s an extreme concern that the curriculum be focused on anti-colonialist perspectives.”

The York Region District School Board — Canada’s third largest — covers similar ground in the Dismantling Anti-Black Racism Strategy it launched last year.

“Ontario’s public education system has evolved within an historical context of white supremacy, colonialism and anti-Black racism,” it says , “all of which have been woven into the fabric of school board policies and practices.”

In support of those statements, the plan documents a relatively little-known aspect of Ontario’s history: how legislation passed in 1850 and not repealed until 1964 allowed white-controlled school boards to set up segregated — usually sub-standard — Black schools. The last such segregated school closed only in 1965 — 11 years after the U.S. Supreme Court Court’s historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision ruled segregation in America was unconstitutional.

The anti-racism training materials for Global Affairs Canada employees include an eloquent column from a deputy minister of partly Chinese descent. He catalogues a heart-breaking array of racist episodes, from being called “chink” countless times to repeatedly having customs officers question whether he was Canadian — even though he carried a Canadian diplomatic passport.

But the material also reflects the CRT notion of a white-supremacist system, saying that “to justify the idea of a white race, every institution was and is used to prove that race exists and to promote the idea that the white race is at the top of the racial hierarchy and all other races are below.”

Only white people can be racist: Inside Global Affairs' anti-racism course materials
'No dissent is allowed': School board bars teacher from raising concerns over transgender books

Another slide lists what it calls the “characteristics of white supremacy culture,” including perfectionism, sense of urgency, worship of the written word, power hoarding, individualism and objectivity.

Skeptics see peril in such ideas.

Teaching children history with all the racist blemishes is a good thing, says Patrick Luciani, a former executive director of the public policy-focused Donner Canadian Foundation . But he worries that CRT proposes a facile solution to complex problems.

“Why are incarceration rates higher for young black men than white? It’s easy to simply say we basically live in a world that is fundamentally and structurally based on racism,” said the book author and opinion writer for The Hub. “If you simply believe that one thing, you don’t have to go any further. And that’s dangerous.”

To the extent that CRT attacks values like objectivity and objective merit, said Sherry, “it’s extremely dangerous to democracy, to community and to progress.”

But Canadian academics who study and uphold critical race theory say it simply reflects reality — that legal, political and educational systems have clearly resulted in different treatment of certain races. Indigenous people, for instance, are far more likely to end up in prison than other Canadians, have worse educational outcomes and, in many cases, can’t even access clean drinking water. Black men in Toronto stand a higher chance of being shot by police and lower odds of making it to college or university.

And more recently, data indicate that Black and other non-white Canadians have been at greater risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.

Xavier says it all flows out of this country’s history, from the Indigenous residential schools with their inter-generational impact, to the experience of enslaved people who fled to Canada in the 19th Century, only to encounter more racism here.

“There is a wonderful history but then when these people arrived, the Canadian state treated them as second-class or third-class citizens,” he said. “If we were really to look at the Canadian system, it was built around oppression — some people were more valuable than others.… If we don’t take stock of what happened, how do we move forward?”

The merits of the theory aside, though, Luciani questions the wisdom of imparting critical race ideas to young, highly impressionable children.

“They haven’t formed the faculty of any kind of critical analysis,” he said. “I don’t know what the sociological ramifications of that are, but they can’t be good.”

The Toronto teacher says she’s seen pupils crying “because they were told by administrators that they were essentially colonizers.”

Sealy-Harrington counters that teaching about English and French imperialism in Canada is not the same as telling children they’re colonizers themselves.

Meanwhile, he says, the school system is hardly the first racial influence on young people.

“The question is not whether or not we should expose children to race. Given their inevitable exposure, it’s how should we educate them about race,” said the Ryerson professor. “Basic psychology will tell you that children learn about race at a young age.… This isn’t some Marxist conspiracy theory. This is literally just true.”

Workers clean Apollo 16 spaceship ahead of 50th anniversary

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — The Apollo 16 capsule is dusty all these decades after it carried three astronauts to the moon. Cobwebs cling to the spacecraft. Business cards, a pencil, money, a spoon and even a tube of lip balm litter the floor of the giant case that protects the space antique in a museum.

The COVID-19 pandemic meant a break in the normal routine of cleaning the ship's display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, located near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. But workers are sprucing up the spacecraft for the 50th anniversary of its April 1972 flight.

Delicately using microfiber towels, extension poles, brushes, dust-catching wands and vacuums, a crew recently cleaned the 6.5-ton, nearly 11-foot-tall capsule and wiped down its glass enclosure, located beneath a massive Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling. They removed dozens of items that people had stuck through cracks in the case.

Aside from overseeing the cleaning, consulting curator Ed Stewart taught museum staff how to maintain the capsule, which is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution and has been displayed in the “rocket city” of Huntsville since the 1970s.

Brushing dust off the side of the capsule while dressed in protective clothing, Stewart said the command module was in “pretty good shape” considering its age and how long it had been since the last cleaning about three years ago.

“I’m pleased to see that there’s not … heavy layers of dust. I’ve not seen a lot of insect debris or anything like that, so I take that as a very positive sign,” he said.

Richard Hoover, a retired NASA astrobiologist who serves as a docent at the museum, remembered a time decades ago when visitors could touch the spacecraft. Some even picked off pieces of the charred heat shield that protected the ship from burning up while reentering Earth's atmosphere, he said


“This is really quite a travesty because they don’t realize that this is a tremendously important piece of space history," he said.

Conservation procedures changed as preservationists realized that a ship built to withstand the rigors of space travel didn't hold up well under the constant touch of tourists, Stewart said. That's why the case surrounding the capsule is sealed.

“Making it last for 1,000 years was not on the engineer’s list of requirements for developing these to get the astronauts to the moon and back safely,” he said.

Perched atop columns, the capsule — nicknamed “Casper” during the flight — is tilted so visitors can look inside the open hatch and see controls and the metal-framed seats where astronauts Ken Mattingly, John Young and Charlie Duke rode to the moon and back.

Duke, who walked on the moon with Young while Mattingly piloted the capsule, is expected to attend a celebration this spring marking the 50th anniversary of the flight's liftoff on April 16, 1972.

The capsule was cleaned and any potentially hazardous materials were removed after the flight, but reminders of its trip to the moon remain inside. Leaning through the hatch to check for dust, Stewart pointed to a few dark spots over his head.

“That's the crew's fingerprints and handprints on there,” he said.

Workers plan to further seal the capsule's case so visitors won't be able to deposit anything inside, but they were careful not to do too much to Apollo 16 itself. While it would be easy enough to scrub down the spaceship with elbow grease, doing so would destroy the patina that links it to history, Stewart said.

“You don't want to lose any of that, because that is all part of the saga of the mission. If you clean it, it's gone. It's that extra texture of history that just sort of is lost to the ether if you make a mistake,” he said.

Jay Reeves, The Associated Press