LONDON, ONTARIO

She's been growing a garden for monarch butterflies for 2 decades. So why did the city mow it down?

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Susan McKee given $125 bylaw ticket around the time

international scientists listed monarchs as endangered

Michelle Both · CBC News · Posted: Jul 26, 2022 4:28 AM ET | Last Updated: July 26

Susan McKee says she's been gardening in her yard since moving to her Briscoe Street West home in London, Ont., 20 years ago. (Michelle Both/CBC)

Susan McKee returned from her summer vacation earlier this month only to discover that her naturalized pollinator garden — once filled with endangered monarch butterflies and bees — was gone. 

"It's all chopped down. Everything's just chopped to the ground," said McKee, who has lived in her Briscoe Street West home in London, Ont., for nearly 20 years. 

McKee said neighbours told her they saw city staff cut down the plants with weed wackers after someone had filed a complaint. 

McKee was given a $125 bylaw ticket from the City of London after her front yard and boulevard pollinator gardens were cut down while she was on vacation. (Michelle Both/CBC)

"I was in shock," said McKee. "I've put lots of time and love into this garden — and just to have it chopped down for no reason other than a neighbour complaint is just devastating."

McKee also received a $125 bylaw ticket last week.

Her garden, once filled with more than 20 varieties of plants — including milkweed, periwinkle, chicory and wild rose — was "quite high," she said. It covered her front yard and the boulevard.

Helping the bees and butterflies

More than 30 milkweed stems were cut down. The plant is known for hosting monarch caterpillars. 

• Monarch butterflies added to international list of threatened species

Just last week, scientists with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature added monarch butterflies to the global endangered species list due to dwindling numbers. The Monarch butterfly had already been designated endangered in Canada by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in 2016.

Wild rose flower used to grow all over McKee's front yard, but now there are only a few left. The pink-flowering plant was one of the varieties cut down by the city. (Michelle Both/CBC)

"I think it's a small part I can do," McKee said of her long-loved garden. "The butterflies are going extinct and I can maintain these here. I can take care of them. I can keep them healthy.

"If I can do my little part of saving the bees and helping the butterflies, then this is what I'm doing and it looks beautiful. It's a win-win situation."

Neighbours collected monarch eggs

While McKee was on vacation, some neighbours collected caterpillar eggs on milkweed leaves from the garden and have been taking care of them a few doors down. 

• Fewer monarchs arriving in northern Ontario, researcher says

• Local monarch butterfly enthusiast has seen sharp decline in caterpillars, eggs

Serenity, an eight-year-old from the neighbourhood, stops by to check on them a few times a week. "Now they are in cocoons and soon they are going to be butterflies," she said. "It's really cool being able to hold them." 

Serenity's mom, Jillian Smith, who has lived in the neighbourhood her entire life, said it broke her heart when the garden was cut down.

Eight-year-old Serenity Smith lives near McKee's home and watches the butterflies grow from eggs collected from her garden. (Michelle Both/CBC)

"I think her garden has been amazing. There's always different wildflowers; you see all different kinds of butterflies, and little bees and flowers," she said. Her three children loved to go and pick wildflowers, but she had heard others neighbours complain it was overgrown.

This wasn't the first time a neighbour had called in a complaint about McKee's garden. Last year, McKee was issued another ticket from city bylaw after a neighbour complained. It was later dropped after she explained it was a pollinator garden, said McKee.

City of London officials say perennial gardens are managed under the Weed Control Act. After a bylaw complaint is made, the city says, the property owner should be notified. McKee said she didn't find a notice in her mailbox when she returned from vacation. 

Think 'more broadly about biodiversity'

Keith Hobson, a professor in the department of biology at Western University, believes pollinator gardens shouldn't be removed. Communities need to start thinking more broadly about biodiversity in their communities, and bylaws need to catch up, he said. 

Milkweed, a natural habitat for monarch butterflies, is already growing back on the boulevard outside McKee's home after they were cut down by City of London workers. (Michelle Both/CBC)

"I think the public are way ahead of the government in this respect, and that is that we cherish and recognize the importance of insects, and pollinators, and birds and all kinds of critters out there that we enjoy in London," he said. 

Monarch butterflies are suffering and insects are declining in huge numbers, said Hobson. 

"People who plant flowers for pollen and nectar are making a great contribution."

'They look almost human made.' NOAA finds weird lines of holes in mid-Atlantic floor

by Mark Price

Credit: NOAA

Scientists exploring a submerged mountain range in the mid-Atlantic stumbled onto something they can't explain: An organized series of holes punched in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

The discovery was made July 23, and photos show the dots connect into nearly straight lines ... or trails ... or designs.

NOAA Ocean Exploration isn't yet sure how to explain it.

"We observed several of these sublinear sets of holes in the sediment. These holes have been previously reported from the region, but their origin remains a mystery," NOAA Ocean Exploration reported.

"While they look almost human made, the little piles of sediment around the holes make them seem like they were excavated by ... something."

The July 23 dive reached depths of 1.7 miles while visiting the summit of an underwater volcano north of the Azores. A remotely operated camera was used to safely record the discoveries.

NOAA posted photos that show the holes were found in what is otherwise a flat sandy surface.

Scientists invited the public to offer theories, but commenters have raised more questions, including some who wondered if the holes were made by someone taking core samples.

"Is that an object or animal inside the holes? Does that line run in the same direction as the current?" Anthony Narehood asked.

"Water from underground springs?" Mike Weathersby posted.

"What about gas methane?" Eduardo Pogorelsky said.

The discovery was made as part of the Voyage to the Ridge 2022 expedition, which is exploring and mapping the "poorly understood deepwater areas of the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Azores Plateau."

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge stretches 10,000 miles from north to south, and is considered "the longest mountain range in the world and one of the most prominent geological features on Earth," NOAA Ocean Exploration says.

"The majority of it sits underwater and thus much of it remains largely unexplored. With active tectonic spreading, the MAR is the site of frequent earthquakes," NOAA reports.

"Hydrothermal vents may form where magma provides heat as it rises to the seafloor. These vents are known to support diverse chemosynthetic communities. However, little is known about life at these sites once vents go extinct, or what life lies beyond the vents, further away from the rift zone."

Mysterious 450-foot 'blue hole' off Florida has researchers looking for signs of life

©2022 The Charlotte Observer.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Exclusive: Hong Kong activists discuss 'parliament-in-exile' after China crackdown

By Natalie Thomas, Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are discussing a plan to create an unofficial parliament-in-exile to keep the flame of democracy alive and send a message to China that freedom cannot be crushed, campaigner Simon Cheng told Reuters.

Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, was convulsed by months of often violent pro-democracy, anti-China protests last year against Chinese interference in its promised freedoms, the biggest political crisis for Beijing since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Hong Kong police fired water cannon and tear gas and arrested more than 300 people on Wednesday as protesters took to the streets again in defiance of new, sweeping security legislation introduced by China to snuff out dissent.

The law pushes China’s freest city and one of the world’s most glittering financial hubs on to a more authoritarian path. China, which denies interfering in Hong Kong, has warned foreign powers not to meddle in its affairs.

Cheng, a Hong Kong citizen, worked for the British consulate in the territory for almost two years until he fled after he said he was beaten and tortured by China’s secret police. Cheng, who has since been granted asylum by Britain, describes himself as pro-democracy campaigner.

“A shadow parliament can send a very clear signal to Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities that democracy need not be at the mercy of Beijing,” he told Reuters in London. “We want to set up non-official civic groups that surely reflect the views of the Hong Kong people.”

He said that while the idea was still at an early stage, such a parliament-in-exile would support the people of Hong Kong and the pro-democracy movement there. He declined to say where the parliament might sit.

“We are developing an alternative way to fight for democracy,” Cheng said. “We need to be clever to deal with the expanding totalitarianism: they are showing more powerful muscle to suppress so we need to be more subtle and agile.”

He said more and more people were “losing hope that it is effective to go out on to the streets or run for election” to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, or mini-parliament.

“We should stand with the Hong Kong people and support those staying in Hong Kong,” he said.

‘VERY GOOD SIGNAL’

Asked about HSBC's HSBA.L support for the sweeping national security law, Cheng said the British government should speak to senior British capitalists to make them understand the importance of democracy.

After Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered millions of Hong Kong residents the path to British citizenship following China’s imposition of the law, hundreds of thousands of people would come to the United Kingdom, Cheng said.

“The UK has given a very good signal,” Cheng said. “At least hundreds of thousands of people will come.”

Almost 3 million Hong Kong residents are eligible for the so called British National (Overseas) passport. There were 349,881 holders of the passports as of February, Britain said.

“One day we will be back in Hong Kong,” Cheng said.

Hong Kong returned to China 23 years ago with the guarantee of freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including its independent legal system and rights to gather and protest, under a “one country, two systems” formula.

Huge protests calling for democracy, especially on the anniversaries of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen crackdown, were common and brought major streets to a standstill for 79 days in the Umbrella movement of 2014.

The national security law punishes crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, will see mainland security agencies in Hong Kong for the first time and allows extradition to the mainland for trial.

Reporting by Natalie Thomas, editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Stephen Addison

SCIENCE FICTION: FUSION POWER

New magnet breakthrough could unleash smaller, more potent fusion reactors

A new technique brings us a step closer to commercially viable nuclear fusion.
 
Chris Young
Created: 26 Jul 2022
INNOVATION

Kiran Sudarsanan/PPPL

Nuclear fusion promises practically limitless energy and an unshackling from the harmful impact of fossil fuel consumption.

Now, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) announced they found a way to build powerful magnets much smaller than ever before, a press statement reveals.

The new innovation could help in the development of tokamak reactors, unlocking the potential of nuclear fusion.

We're on the verge of viable nuclear fusion HAVE BEEN FOR SIXTY YEARS NOW

The scientists found a new method for building high-temperature superconducting magnets that are made of material that conducts electricity with practically no resistance at temperatures warmer than before. The smaller magnets will more easily fit inside spherical tokamaks, which are being investigated as a potential alternative to the more conventional doughnut-shaped tokamaks.

Fusion scientists and engineers use these incredibly powerful magnets to control and maintain the hot plasma required for the nuclear fusion reaction to take place. Crucially, the new magnets could be placed separately from other machinery in the spherical tokamak's central cavity. This means scientists would be able to repair them without having to dismantle any other parts of the tokamak.

"To do this, you need a magnet with a stronger magnetic field and a smaller size than current magnets," explained Yuhu Zhai, a principal engineer at PPPL and lead author of a paper on the new magnets published in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. "The only way you do that is with superconducting wires, and that's what we've done."

The magnets could also potentially allow scientists to develop smaller tokamaks, which could improve performance as well as reduce the cost of construction and operation. "Tokamaks are sensitive to the conditions in their central regions, including the size of the central magnet, or solenoid, the shielding, and the vacuum vessel," said Jon Menard, PPPL's deputy director for research. "A lot depends on the center. So if you can shrink things in the middle, you can shrink the whole machine and reduce cost while, in theory, improving performance."

New technique makes magnets cheaper, smaller, and more powerful

The new magnets were designed using a technique developed by Zhai and colleagues at Advanced Conductor Technologies, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, in Tallahassee, Florida. They devised a technique that does not require traditional epoxy and glass fiber insulation for their magnet's wires, allowing them to reduce the size.

By removing epoxy from the equation, the researchers also lower the cost of magnet production, which will also result in cheaper tokamaks. The costs to wind the coils are much lower because we don't have to go through the expensive and error-prone epoxy vacuum-impregnation process," Zhai said. "Instead, you're directly winding the conductor into the coil form."

The smaller magnets will, in theory, allow for more design iterations of tokamaks, as they can be more easily placed in different locations, allowing for more configurations. We may still be a long way from seeing the first fully operational fusion reactor, but this new development brings us one step closer to commercially viable nuclear fusion.

U.S. offers Russia deal to bring home basketball star Brittney Griner

Griner says interpreter translated only part of her answers at airport interrogation

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 27, 2022 

Brittney Griner, seen above entering her trial on Wednesday, provided testimony about her airport interrogation after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. CBD OIL

 (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration has offered a deal to Russia aimed at bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. In a sharp reversal of previous policy, Blinken also said he expects to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The statement marked the first time the U.S. government has publicly revealed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday at her trial.

Blinken did not offer details on the proposed deal, which was offered weeks ago, though it is unclear if it will be enough for Russia to release the Americans. But the public acknowledgment of the offer at a time when the U.S. has otherwise shunned Russia, reflects the mounting pressure on the administration over Griner and Whelan and its determination to get them home.
Blinken said Washington would like a response from Moscow. Russia has for years expressed interest in the release of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer once labeled the "Merchant of Death" who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 on charges that he schemed to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.

OPINION Washington is on the clock as WNBA star Brittney Griner languishes in Russian custody

Blinken said he had requested a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. U.S. officials said the desire for an answer on the prisoner offer was the primary, but not only, reason that the U.S. on Wednesday requested the call with Lavrov.
1st contact since before Ukraine invasion

Should the call take place, it would be the first conversation that Blinken and Lavrov have held since Feb. 15, about a week before Russia invaded Ukraine. Blinken said he would also be speaking to Lavrov about the importance of Russia complying with a UN-brokered deal to free multiple tons of Ukrainian grain from storage and warning him about the dangers of possible Russian attempts to annex portions of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He and his family have vigorously asserted his innocence. The U.S. government has denounced the charges as false. He and his family have vigorously asserted his innocence. The U.S. government has denounced the charges as false.

Griner, in Russian custody for the last five months, acknowledged in court this month that she had vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage when she arrived in Moscow in February but contends she had no criminal intent and packed the cartridges inadvertently.
Griner testifies in court

At her trial Wednesday, Griner said she did not know how the cannabis oil ended up in her bag but explained she had a doctor's recommendation for it and had packed in haste. She said she was pulled aside at the airport after inspectors found the cartridges, but that a language interpreter translated only a fraction of what was said during her questioning and that officials instructed her to sign documents without providing an explanation.

Griner faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of transporting drugs.

WATCH | Griner tells court of poor translation during arrest: 

Brittney Griner testifies interpreter translated only part of her answers at airport interrogation

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner told a Russian courtroom in an ongoing trial on drug charges that a language interpreter translated only a fraction of what was said during her interrogation at a Moscow airport. She testified the officials instructed her to sign documents without providing an explanation.

The U.S. government has long resisted prisoner swaps out of concern that it could encourage additional hostage-taking and promote false equivalency between a wrongfully detained American and a foreign national regarded as justly convicted. But an earlier deal in April, in which Marine veteran Trevor Reed was traded for jailed Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, appeared to open the door to similar resolutions in the future and the Biden administration has been hounded with political pressure to bring home Griner and other Americans designated as unjustly detained.

There was no indication that Blinken and Lavrov had communicated to secure Reed's release. Their last publicly recognized contact was Feb. 22, when Blinken wrote to Lavrov to cancel a meeting they had planned as a last-ditch effort to avert the Russian invasion, saying Moscow had shown no interest in serious diplomacy on the matter. The State Department said later that Russia's diplomacy was "Kabuki Theater" — all show and no substance.

Brittney Griner's Russian trial considers medicinal use of cannabis

The two last met in person in Geneva in January to discuss what was then Russia's massive military build-up along Ukraine's border and Russian demands for NATO to reduce its presence in eastern Europe and permanently deny Ukraine membership. The U.S. rejected the Russian demands.

Blinken and Lavrov avoided each other earlier this month at the next time they were in the same place at the same time: at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Bali, Indonesia.

The two men will next be in the same city at the same time next week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they will both be attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. It was not immediately clear if the phone call ahead of that meeting, set for Aug. 4-5, would presage an in-person discussion.

INFLATIONARY PROFITEERING

Rogers profits jumped 35% in the three months prior to the recent outage

Pete Evans · CBC News · Posted: Jul 27, 2022 

Rogers added 122,000 new wireless customers between April and June and saw its profits jump by more than a third in the three months leading to the devastating outage that affected the entire country. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg)

Rogers Communications Inc. earned 10 per cent more revenue and saw its profits jump by more than a third in the three months leading to the end of June, a financial reporting period that ended just before a devastating outage wiped out the company's telecom networks across the country.

The telecom giant posted quarterly results before stock markets opened on Wednesday, and the numbers painted a picture of a company whose business was booming.

Wireless service revenue increased by 11 per cent to just shy of $1.8 billion "primarily as a result of higher roaming revenue associated with significantly increased travel," the company said. Rogers added roughly 122,000 new wireless customers during the quarter, roughly twice the number it added a year ago.

As well, cable revenues increased by 3 per cent to just over $1.03 billion, "primarily as a result of service pricing changes," the company said.

Rogers promises investment to avoid future network outagesRogers executives try to quell anger over outage during committee appearance

The media division saw the biggest boost of all, with revenues increasing by 21 per cent to $659 million compared to the same period a year ago. The biggest reason for that uptick was the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, which Rogers owns, being able to once again play home games and televise them from the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

This time last year, the Blue Jays were playing home games in the United States due to COVID travel restrictions.

Across all business units, Rogers took in just over $3.8 billion during the quarter, an eight per cent increase from last year, and posted a profit of $409 million — a 35 per cent increase from a year ago.
Cost of outage yet to be accounted for

However, all of this financial performance came before July 8th, when the company's network was wiped out by a botched upgrade that caused cascading failures across the country.

Rogers estimates that it expects to issue about $150 million in rebates to customers as compensation for the outage, and pledges to spend billions in capital investments to upgrade its systems to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"The investments we are making to enhance the reliability of our networks are the right things to do, and it will not impact our prices in this highly competitive market," a spokesperson with the company told CBC News this week.

Rogers also officially delayed its self-imposed deadline to finalize its merger with Shaw until the end of the year. When the merger was first proposed in early 2021, both sides expected it to be completed by now, but regulatory delays caused them to push the deadline back until July 31.

On Wednesday, the company revealed it doesn't expect to be able to make the deal official until the end of this year.

Rogers blames massive outage on error during network update

Rogers CEO announces new protocols, investment in wake of major service outage

New study looks at 'magic' mushrooms as treatment for depression, without the psychedelic high

Megan DeLaire
CTVNews.ca Writer
 July 27, 2022 

A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) will attempt to harness the antidepressant power of psilocybin mushrooms, but without the psychedelic experience.

Psilocybin is the hallucinogenic chemical compound in "magic" mushrooms that generates a psychedelic high. However, clinical trials have shown psilocybin mushrooms also have antidepressant effects on people whose depression is resistant to other treatments, when combined with intensive psychotherapy.

Over a period of three years, researchers at CAMH will try to learn whether the psychedelic experience itself is necessary to treat depression in a federally-funded study that lead researcher Dr. Ishrat Husain says is the first of its kind.

"What we're trying to address with this study, which I think is a glaring question in the field, is whether the psychedelic high is required for the therapeutic benefits,” Husain told CTVNews.ca. “It's assumed that it is, but nobody's actually designed a clinical trial to answer that question."

Husain and his team will compare the outcomes of 60 adults with treatment-resistant depression. Over the course of the study, a third of the participants will receive a full dose of psilocybin plus a serotonin blocker to inhibit the drug’s psychedelic effect. Another group will be given psilocybin plus a placebo. The final group will receive a placebo, plus the serotonin blocker. All participants will also receive 12 hours of psychotherapy.

This is the second clinical psilocybin trial at CAMH, which was the Canadian site for the world’s largest clinical trial of psilocybin in mental health to date, in 2021.

If the new study shows psilocybin mushrooms have equal antidepressant effects with or without the psychedelic experience, Husain said it could be a “game changer” for people with treatment-resistant depression who aren’t candidates for a psychedelic high.

“There are certain physical and psychological contraindications to receiving potent psychoactive drugs like psilocybin,” he said. “If we're able to show that the psychedelic experience isn't entirely necessary, it could lead to a sort of new therapeutic development for the treatment of depression."

'HOPE OF INNOVATION'

Some day, Carole Dagher might need to put her trust in a new treatment. In fact, Dagher believes it’s inevitable. After years of trying to treat her depression, she’s in a good place. But she knows it won’t last.

"I will have another dip, there's no question about it,” Dagher told CTVNews.ca. “This is just going to be my life, it's something I'm going to have to manage."

Dagher is a patient of Husain’s who suffers from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. She first developed postpartum depression following the birth of her oldest daughter 12 years ago. Her symptoms were compounded by trauma from childhood experiences growing up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War In the years since her initial diagnosis, she has struggled with suicidal ideation, tried five classes of antidepressant medication, seen psychologists and tried both electroconvulsive therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy.

After those methods failed, she turned to ketamine therapy, which was approved by Health Canada to treat major depressive disorder in 2020. Ketamine is an anaesthetic that induces strong psychedelic experiences in therapeutic doses. Dagher called those experiences “horrific,” and said they were so unbearable she nearly quit the therapy before finishing her eight sessions. She stuck with it, however, and awoke one morning after her final session feeling restored.

"I opened my eyes in the morning and the sky was blue, and the birds were chirping, and I smiled for the first time in 12 years and it was a genuine smile,” she said.

She’s still doing well, with help from an antidepressant and regular therapy sessions. But she’s waiting for the day her symptoms stop responding to ketamine. When that day comes, she'll need to look for another treatment — preferably one without a high. That's why she sees so much promise in Husain’s study.

"Without the hope of innovation, I cannot survive another day. I have to believe deep down in my heart that people like Dr. Husain and hospitals like CAMH will not stop innovating. Ketamine worked now, but it might not work later,” she said. “And I'd much rather not have the psychedelic trip, and take the [psilocybin] and have it do its thing."

On the subject of access to psilocybin therapy, while Johns Hopkins University scientist David Yaden agrees being able to offer the therapy without a psychedelic experience would make it accessible to more people, he worries about patients who may want or need the full experience.

Yaden is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research who has published multiple scientific articles about the use of psilocybin as a potential treatment.

“What I worry about is an unintentional side-effect of characterizing the acute subjective effects of psychedelics — the trip, so to speak — as an unwanted side effect,” he told CTVNews.ca.

"As long as participants are screened and administered psilocybin in a supportive setting, we see that these experiences can be challenging, but they're overall very positive and deeply meaningful. That's just what the data say."

Yaden also believes, based on past studies, that a dose of psilocybin without the psychedelic side-effects likely only delivers short-term neurobiological benefits. In a report released in December 2020, he and fellow Johns Hopkins researcher Roland Griffiths argued there are long term, complex changes that can only take place in the brain during a psychedelic experience.

Regardless, he said the CAMH study is asking important questions in an area of research his team would like to explore more.

“I support research like this study looking at the causal role of the acute subjective effects of psychedelics, because I think it's a very important question to examine,” he said.

"This research is important for both clinical and scientific reasons. It's great and I'm really glad it's happening. We've been trying to do this research as well. I'm very much for it."

___

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (or 988 beginning July 16, 2022) or Canada's Talk Suicide 1-833-456-4566. The following resources are also available to support people in crisis:

Hope for Wellness Helpline (English, French, Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut): 1-855-242-3310

Embrace Life Council hotline: 1-800-265-3333

Trans Lifeline: 1-877-330-6366

Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868

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COLD WAR 2.0

U$ Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill to Counter China

The lopsided bipartisan vote reflected a rare consensus in the otherwise polarized Congress in favor of investing federal resources into a broad industrial policy to counter China.

A semiconductor production facility in Beijing. The issue of commercial and military competition with China — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has brought Democrats and Republicans together.

Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Catie Edmondson
July 27, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed an expansive $280 billion bill aimed at building up America’s manufacturing and technological edge to counter China, embracing in an overwhelming bipartisan vote the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.

The legislation reflected a remarkable and rare consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress in favor of forging a long-term strategy to address the nation’s intensifying geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, centered around investing federal money into cutting-edge technologies and innovations to bolster the nation’s industrial, technological and military strength.

It passed on a lopsided bipartisan vote of 64 to 33, with 17 Republicans voting in support. The margin illustrated how commercial and military competition with Beijing — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has dramatically shifted longstanding party orthodoxies, generating agreement among Republicans who once had eschewed government intervention in the markets and Democrats who had resisted showering big companies with federal largess.

“No country’s government — even a strong country like ours — can afford to sit on the sidelines,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader who helped to spearhead the measure, said in an interview. “I think it’s a sea change that will stay.”

The legislation will next be considered by the House, where it is expected to pass with some Republican support. President Biden, who has backed the package for more than a year, could sign it into law as early as this week.

The bill, a convergence of economic and national security policy, would provide $52 billion in subsidies and additional tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States. It also would add $200 billion in scientific research, especially into artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and a range of other technologies.

Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, left, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been working on the technology bill for years.

Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Its passage was the culmination of a years long effort that, in Mr. Schumer’s telling, began in the Senate gym in 2019, when he approached Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, with the idea. Mr. Young, a fellow China hawk, had previously collaborated with Democrats on foreign policy.

In the end, it was made possible only by an unlikely collision of factors: a pandemic that laid bare the costs of a global semiconductor shortage, heavy lobbying from the chip industry, Mr. Young’s persistence in urging his colleagues to break with party orthodoxy and support the bill, and Mr. Schumer’s ascension to the top job in the Senate.

Many senators, including Republicans, saw the legislation as a critical step to strengthen America’s semiconductor manufacturing abilities at a time when the nation has become perilously reliant on foreign countries — especially an increasingly vulnerable Taiwan — for advanced chips.

Read More on the Relations Between Asia and the U.S.Trade Policy: The new trade deal announced by President Biden during a trip to Asia is based on two big ideas: containing China and moving away from a focus on markets and tariffs.

Taiwan: The Biden administration has grown increasingly anxious that China might try to move against this self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to close off the Taiwan Strait.

China: At a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sought to cool tensions with Beijing in an effort to further isolate Russia. He met resistance.

South Pacific: As Beijing seeks a sweeping regional deal with Pacific Island nations, the United States is left playing catch-up in an increasingly vital arena of its global competition with China.

A phalanx of former President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisers, from H.R. McMaster to Mike Pompeo, came out in support for the legislation, helping Republican lawmakers make the argument that voting for the bill would be a sufficiently hawkish move.

Mr. Schumer said it had been not too difficult to rally votes from Democrats, who tend to be less averse to government spending. “But to their credit, 17 Republicans, including McConnell, came in and said, ‘This is one expenditure we should make.’”

The legislation, which was known in Washington by an ever-changing carousel of lofty-sounding names, has defied easy definition. At more than 1,000 pages long, it is at once a research and development bill, a near-term and long-term jobs bill, a manufacturing bill and a semiconductors bill.

Its initial version, written by Mr. Schumer and Mr. Young, was known as the Endless Frontier Act, a reference to the 1945 landmark report commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking how the federal government could promote scientific progress and manpower.

“New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war,” Mr. Roosevelt wrote at the time, “we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.”

Enactment of the legislation is considered a critical step to strengthening America’s semiconductor abilities at a time when the share of modern manufacturing capacity in the United States has plummeted to 12 percent. That has left the nation increasingly reliant on foreign countries amid a chip shortage that has sent shock waves through the global supply chain.

The subsidies for chip companies were expected to immediately produce tens of thousands of jobs, with manufacturers pledging to build new factories or expand existing plants in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Idaho and New York.

The bill also seeks to create research and development and manufacturing jobs in the long run, with provisions aimed at building up pipelines of workers — through work-force development grants and other programs — concentrated in once-booming industrial hubs hollowed out by corporate offshoring.

In an interview, Mr. Young described the legislation as an effort to equip American workers hurt by globalization with jobs in cutting-edge fields that would also help reduce the nation’s dependence on China.

“These technologies are key to our national security,” Mr. Young said. “We’re actually giving rank-and-file Americans an opportunity, as it relates to chip manufacturing, for example, to play a meaningful role, not only in supporting their families, but also harnessing our creativity, talents, and hard work, to win the 21st century.”

The bill is expected to pave the way for the construction of factories across the country and, along with that, an estimated tens of thousands of jobs.

Image

President Biden met virtually with CEOs and labor leaders about the CHIPS Act on Monday. Its subsidies for chip companies were expected to lead to the production of tens of thousands of jobs.

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Chip manufacturers lobbied heavily, and often shamelessly, for the subsidies, in recent months vocally threatening to plunge their resources into building plants in foreign countries like Germany or Singapore if Congress didn’t quickly agree to shower them with federal money to stay in the United States.

Most senators, especially those representing states eyed by chip companies, saw those efforts as reason to quickly pass the legislation. But they particularly infuriated Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who bluntly and frequently accused the prosperous executives of such companies of shaking down Congress.

“In order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a massive taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did.”

Several times in the bill’s life span, it appeared doomed to either collapse or be drastically slimmed down, with the long-term strategic policy provisions whittled off and only the most commercially and politically urgent measure, the $52 billion in subsidies for chip companies, remaining.

The bill appeared imperiled late last month after Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, announced that he would not let it proceed if Senate Democrats continued to advance their social policy and tax plan, the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.

In a private conversation, Mr. Young asked Mr. McConnell to reconsider.

Mr. McConnell “saw the near-term value proposition, and frankly, the criticality of getting the chips legislation funded,” Mr. Young recalled.

Still, with Mr. McConnell’s position uncertain and other Republicans refusing to commit to supporting the measure, Mr. Schumer moved last week to force a quick vote on the semiconductor subsidies, leaving open the possibility that the broader bill would be sidelined.

That sparked a last-minute effort by Mr. Young to secure the support of enough Republicans — at least 15, Mr. Schumer had told him — to restore the critical investments in manufacturing and technology. For days, Mr. Young and his allies worked the phones to try to win over Republicans, emphasizing the national security importance of the bill and the opportunities it could bring to their states.

Ahead of the final passage vote at a private party lunch on Tuesday, Mr. Schumer gave his members a pitch of his own.

“This bill is going to have one of the greatest and most far-reaching effects on America that we’ve ever done,” Mr. Schumer said he told Democratic senators. “A lot of your grandchildren will be in good-paying jobs because of the vote you’re taking.”

GEOLOGY

Strange, never-before-seen diamond crystal structure found inside 'Diablo canyon' meteorite

Scientists found something unexpected inside a meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago.

By JoAnna Wendel 

published 2 days ago

A Diablo Canyon meteorite fell to Earth around 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in 1891. New research suggests it contains never-before-seen diamond crystal structures. (Image credit: Terryfic3D/Getty)

While studying diamonds inside an ancient meteorite, scientists have found a strange, interwoven microscopic structure that has never been seen before.

The structure, an interlocking form of graphite and diamond, has unique properties that could one day be used to develop superfast charging or new types of electronics, researchers say.

The diamond structures were locked inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which slammed into Earth 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in Arizona in 1891. The diamonds in this meteorite aren't the kind most people are familiar with. Most known diamonds were formed around 90 miles (150 kilometers) beneath Earth's surface, where temperatures rise to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,093 degrees Celsius). The carbon atoms within these diamonds are arranged in cubic shapes.

By contrast, the diamonds inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite are known as lonsdaleite — named after British crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, University College London's first female professor — and have a hexagonal crystal structure. These diamonds form only under extremely high pressures and temperatures. Although scientists have successfully made lonsdaleite in a lab — using gunpowder and compressed air to propel graphite disks 15,000 mph (24,100 km/h) at a wall — lonsdaleite is otherwise formed only when asteroids strike Earth at enormously high speeds.

Related: Diamond hauled from deep inside Earth holds never-before-seen mineral

While studying lonsdaleite in the meteorite, the researchers found something odd. Instead of the pure hexagonal structures they were expecting, the researchers found growths of another carbon-based material called graphene interlocking with the diamond. These growths are known as diaphites(opens in new tab), and inside the meteorite, they form in a particularly intriguing layered pattern. In between these layers are "stacking faults," which mean the layers don't line up perfectly, the researchers said in a statement(opens in new tab).

Finding diaphites in the meteoritic lonsdaleite suggests that this material can be found in other carbonaceous material, the scientists wrote in the study, which means it could be readily available to use as a resource. The finding also gives the researchers a better sense of the pressures and temperatures needed to create the structure.

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Graphene is made of a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, arranged in hexagons. Although research on this material is still ongoing, the material has many potential applications. Because it is both as light as a feather and as strong as a diamond; both transparent and highly conductive; and 1 million times thinner than a human hair(opens in new tab), it could one day be used for more targeted medicines, tinier electronics with lighting-fast charging speeds, or faster and bendier technology, the researchers said.

And now that researchers have discovered these graphene growths inside meteorites, it's possible to learn more about how they form — and thus how to make them in the lab.

"Through the controlled layer growth of structures, it should be possible to design materials that are both ultra-hard and also ductile, as well as have adjustable electronic properties from a conductor to an insulator," Christoph Salzmann, a chemist at University College London and co-author of a paper describing the research, said in the statement

The strange new structures were described July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Originally published on Live Science.

GEMOLOGY

Australian mining company unearths rare 170-carat pink diamond believed to be largest seen in 300 years

The Lulo rose is among the largest pink diamonds ever found.

(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator has announced.

Key points:

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at Lulo mine

In 2017 a 59.6-carat pink diamond sold at a Hong Kong auction for more than $102 million

A 170-carat pink diamond — dubbed the Lulo rose — was discovered at the Lulo alluvial diamond mine in the country's diamond-rich north-east, and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors on Wednesday.

The Lulo mine has already produced the two largest diamonds ever found in Angola, including a 404-carat clear diamond.

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at the mine where 27 diamonds of 100 carats or more have been found, according to Lucapa.

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds.

Similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

The "historic" find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine.

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"This record and spectacular pink diamond recovered from Lulo continues to showcase Angola as an important player on the world stage," Angola's Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The pink diamond will be sold by international tender by the Angolan state diamond marketing company, Sodiam, likely at a dazzling price.

Although the Lulo rose would have to be cut and polished to realise its true value, in a process that can see a stone lose 50 per cent of its weight, similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

The 59.6-carat Pink Star was sold at a Hong Kong auction in 2017 for US$71.2 million (more than $102 million). It remains the most expensive diamond ever sold.

The pink diamond is an impressive size but many clear diamonds are larger than 1,000 carats.

The Cullinan diamond found in South Africa in 1905 tips the scales at 3,106 carats and is in the British Sovereign's Sceptre.

AFP / AP