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Robert Arnason / Western Producer / Glacier Media – Jun 18, 2023 / 9:58 am | Story: 432509
Photo: File photo/Western Producer.
Canada has struggled to export beef to Europe, despite gaining a 65,000 tonne tariff-free quota in the CETA deal. The Europeans have thrown up technical barriers to Canadian beef, such as objecting to carcass washes used at Canadian packing plants.
In a reversal of a five-year trend, Canada is importing less beef from Europe this year.
From January to the end of April, Canada purchased $25 million worth of beef from European Union countries.
That’s a decline of 34 percent from the $38 million imported during the same period in 2022.
The downturn in beef imports from Europe represents a short-term change in trading patterns.
From 2018-22 the amount of beef entering Canada from Spain, Ireland, Italy and other EU countries has climbed dramatically.
In 2018, EU beef shipments to Canada were worth $15 million. By 2022, that figure hit $114 million. EU exports boomed after Canada and Europe signed the Canada European Union Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2017.
Meanwhile, Canada has struggled to export beef to Europe, despite gaining a 65,000 tonne tariff-free quota in the CETA deal.
The Europeans have thrown up technical barriers to Canadian beef, such as objecting to carcass washes used at Canadian packing plants.
“We got a good deal as far as the tariff goes, and quotas for darn near 65,000 tonnes of duty-free access for Canadian beef is a needle mover,” Ryder Lee, general manager of the Canadian Cattle Association, told The Western Producer last year.
“But if our big plants can’t access that (because of barriers), then it’s not moving that needle.”
In 2022, Canada shipped $22 million worth of beef to the EU, so the deficit in beef trade with Europe was more than $80 million.
However, in the first four months of 2023, Canadian exporters are having more success in the EU market:
- From Jan. 1 to the end of April, beef exports to Europe were $10.7 million.
- That’s up 73 percent from $6.2 million in the same period in 2022.
- Canada is on pace to sell $30 million in beef to the EU in 2023, which would be the highest amount since CETA was enacted.
The European market is lucrative for Canadian exporters because prices are extremely strong. Data from cdnbeefperforms.ca shows the average price of Canadian beef exported to the Netherlands is $19.63 per kilogram. In comparison, the price per kilogram of beef shipped to Japan is $10.35.
The beef trade with Europe may be improving, but pork remains a problem.
Last year, Canada imported $285 million in pork from the EU and shipped only $1.2 million to Europe, a trade deficit of $284 million.
Contact [email protected]
Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press – Jun 18, 2023 / 7:11 am | Story: 432496
Photo: The Canadian Press
FILE – People prepare to take a polar plunge in the Bering Sea in front of the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity, which anchored just outside Nome, Alaska, because it was too big to dock at the Port of Nome, Aug. 21, 2016. Shipping lanes that were once clogged with ice for much of the year along Alaska’s western and northern coasts have relented thanks to global warming, and the nation’s first deep water Arctic port should be operational in Nome by the end of the decade. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.
It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.
But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.
The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.
That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.
It’s a prospect that excites business owners and officials in Nome, but concerns others who worry about the impact of additional tourists and vessel traffic on the environment and animals Alaska Natives depend on for subsistence.
The expansion will “support our local economy and the local artists here, the Indigenous artists having access to the visitors and teaching and sharing our culture and our language and how we how we make our beautiful art,” said Alice Bioff, an Inupiaq resident of Nome.
Bioff was a tour guide who greeted the Serenity’s passengers when they arrived in 2016. One of the guests admired her cloth kuspuk, a traditional Alaska Native garment similar to a smock, and wanted to know if it was water resistant.
It wasn’t, but the interaction inspired Bioff to create her own line of waterproof jackets styled like kuspuks. She now sells to tourists and locals alike from her own Naataq Gear gift store, a retail spot in the post office building, where about 20 Alaska Native artists offer ivory carvings, beadwork or paintings through consignment.
Studies show that cruise ship passengers typically spend about $100 per day in Nome, city manager Glenn Steckman said.
With the expansion, he’s hoping guests on larger cruise ships will extend their stays to experience more of Nome and the tundra, to view wild musk ox, or to sip a drink at the 123-year-old Board of Trade Saloon.
Climate change is making this all possible.
Nome, founded after gold was discovered in 1898, has seen six of its 10 warmest winters on record just in this century. The Bering Strait shipping lanes have gotten only busier since 2009, going from 262 transits that year to 509 in 2022.
“We’re going to be the first deep-draft Arctic port but probably not going to be the last,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said.
The Bering Sea ice on average reaches Nome in late November or December, about two or three weeks later than it did 50 years ago, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
In 2019, mushers in the Iditarod, who normally drive their dog teams on the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome, were forced onto the beach because of open water. The ice season will only get shorter, Thoman said.
The existing port causeway was completed in the mid-1980s. The expansion will be completed in three phases and effectively double its size. The first part of the project is funded by $250 million in federal infrastructure money with another $175 million from the Alaska Legislature. Field work is expected to begin next year.
Currently three ships can dock at once; the expanded dock will accommodate seven to 10.
Workers will dredge a new basin 40 feet (12.2 meters) deep, allowing large cruises ships, cargo vessels, and every U.S. military ship except aircraft carriers to dock, Port Director Joy Baker said.
U.S. Rep. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said the expanded port will become the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic. The military is building up resources in Alaska, placing fighter jets at bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks, establishing a new Army airborne division in Alaska, training soldiers for future cold-weather conflicts and has missile defense capabilities.
“The way you have a presence in the Arctic is to be able to have military assets and the infrastructure that supports those assets,” Sullivan said.
The northern seas near Alaska are getting more crowded. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol board encountered seven Chinese and Russian naval vessels cooperating in an exercise last year about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island.
Coast guard vessels in 2021 also encountered Chinese ships 50 miles (80 km) off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last yea r warned that Russia and China have pledged to cooperate in the Arctic, “a deepening strategic partnership that challenges our values and interests.”
Still, the prospect of Nome welcoming more tourists and a greater military presence bothers some residents. Austin Ahmasuk, an Inupiaq native, said the port’s original construction displaced an area traditionally used for subsistence hunting or fishing, and the expansion won’t help.
“The Port of Nome is development purely for the sake of development,” Ahmasuk said.
The Canadian Press – Jun 18, 2023 / 7:08 am | Story: 432495
Photo: The Canadian Press
Marie Chevrier Schwartz, the founder and chief executive of Toronto-based brand promotions company Sampler, is photographed in Toronto, on Thursday June 15, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
For as long as she has worked, Marie Chevrier Schwartz has paid into Canada’s Employment Insurance program. Yet when she eventually needed to collect the benefit, she was denied support.
In 2021, the chief executive of Toronto-based brand promotions company Sampler had just given birth to her first child and, for the first time since founding her company eight years earlier, planned to take a break. She spent months co-ordinating with the board of directors and senior leadership about what responsibilities other staff would assume during her three months of maternity leave.
But after Chevrier Schwartz applied for parental benefits, she found officials didn’t seem to trust that she had stopped working. In two interviews and an audit of her application, she said they questioned why her email signature and voicemail still said she was chief executive and whether she’d truly backed away. Chevrier Schwartz said she had been too caught up with her newborn to change her messages.
Eventually, an email arrived denying her the benefits because she was at “non-arm’s length” from the company. She decided at that point to cut her maternity leave short, taking off just one month.
“I didn’t have the energy to be upset at that point, to be honest,” said Chevrier Schwartz. “Now my son is two years old and I’ve had an opportunity to take a little bit of a step back on this and think, and I’m like … ‘This is unacceptable.'”
Chevrier Schwartz’s experience is not unusual among entrepreneurs, some of whom say they have been denied access to parenting benefits on similar grounds and feel Canada’s policies penalize them for remaining involved in their businesses even during a leave.
They say it’s time for the Canadian government to re-examine benefits for all company founders but especially women, who, on average, make less than men and are less likely to be entrepreneurs or make it to the C-Suite.
“It feels like another hurdle, yet another thing to overcome,” said Krystyn Harrison, founder of Toronto-based coaching business Prosper, who discovered how hard it is to get parental benefits when she was researching the process for her pregnant co-founder in 2019.
“I was thinking, ‘Gosh, how am I going to continue to build this business and start a family if there are really no parental benefits for me?’ I would have to fully self-fund, which as a startup and not an established company, I actually, frankly, was extremely discouraged by.”
Harrison, who now has a son, sold the assets in 2020. She has since become chief operating officer of a consulting firm.
“I don’t think you should have to decide between building a company and scaling it, and starting a family,” she said.
Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program gives people up to 55 per cent of their earnings, to a maximum of $650 a week, for people who are away from work because they’re pregnant, have recently given birth or are caring for their newborn or newly adopted child.
Applicants must prove their regular weekly earnings have decreased by more than 40 per cent for at least one week and they have accumulated 600 insured hours of work.
Those who are self-employed, run their own business or control more than 40 per cent of a corporation’s voting shares have a separate program they can apply to for maternity and parental leave, sickness, family caregiver and compassionate care benefits.
However, that program has additional criteria. Applicants must register for the program at least 12 months before drawing benefits from it, decrease the amount of time they spend on their business by more than 40 per cent and have met an income threshold to be eligible.
Stefanie Ricchio, a Bolton, Ont. accountant, said a lot of Canadians find the EI stipulations “not self-explanatory.”
“It is very convoluted … I wouldn’t dare say that it would ever be as straightforward as it is for someone who is an employee of a company from which they have no ownership.”
Asked about the difficulties entrepreneurs face in accessing benefits, Mila Roy, a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada, said the government’s latest budget proposed more financial supports for workers in seasonal industries and improving the recourse process for appeals.
“The government remains committed to modernizing the EI system,” she said in an email. “However, the current and near-term economic context pressures caution against measures that could put pressure on EI premiums. The government must be careful about any decision that could make it harder for workers and employers to make ends meet.”
Ali de Bold is adamant that change is necessary. She discovered she was ineligible for parental benefits a few months before giving birth to her first child in 2011, when she called the government to learn what steps she’d need to complete to apply.
The Kitchener, Ont.-based founder of consumer research platforms Butterly and ChickAdvisor said she was told because she owned slightly more than 40 per cent of her company she couldn’t collect benefits.
“It was a huge shock because my company was still very much in startup mode,” she said.
“There was no way that I could afford to pay myself my salary while I was off because I needed other people to do the work that I was not going to be able to do, and I needed to be able to pay them.”
Roy said there is no upper limit on how much of a company an individual may own in order to collect parental benefits from the government.
De Bold successfully sought a ruling from the government that saw her reimbursed for the EI premiums she had previously paid, though it paled in comparison to what parental benefits would have been.
She shortened her maternity leave to a few months and two years later, when she had a daughter, she took even less time.
“I regret to this day that I didn’t get precious time with my kids because I couldn’t afford to,” she said.
Erin Bury saw the intricacies of the government’s policies when she took four months of maternity leave in 2021 after her daughter was born.
She had always paid into EI and, as chief executive of Toronto-based online wills platform Willful, was eligible for benefits. But her husband, the company’s founder, had never paid into EI because he didn’t think he would qualify. When he took eight months off with their baby, it was with no government support.
Bury hired someone to fill in for her and trained the person well in advance, leaving behind guidance about what circumstances would necessitate the replacement to reach out to her.
She sought advice on navigating leave policies from others pregnant at the same time as her, and while she thinks the government could do more to support parents, she said companies need to step up, too.
“The consensus from my peer group of entrepreneurs and friends is that most companies have woefully inadequate parental leave policies that are buried in the corner of an employee handbook,” Bury said.
Willful offers a parental leave top-up of 80 per cent of the worker’s salary for 12 weeks, allows stock options to vest during a leave and lets sick days be used for child-rearing responsibilities, among other benefits.
“Just like virtual and remote workplaces are becoming a competitive edge,” said Bury, “having really strong parental leave policies and talking about them in job interviews and … being supportive of people expanding their families will become a huge competitive edge in the future.”
Frank Bajak, The Associated Press – Jun 18, 2023 / 6:18 am | Story: 432490
Photo: The Canadian Press
FILE – The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. Microsoft says the early June 2023 disruptions to its Microsoft’s flagship office suite — including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps — were denial-of-service attacks by a shadowy new hacktivist group. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite — including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps — and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by the murky upstart were indeed to blame.
But the software giant has offered few details — and did not immediately comment on how many customers were affected and whether the impact was global. A spokeswoman confirmed that the group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan was behind the attacks. It claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian.
Microsoft’s explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Slim on details, the post said the attacks “temporarily impacted availability” of some services. It said the attackers were focused on “disruption and publicity” and likely used rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from so-called botnets of zombie computers around the globe.
Microsoft said there was no evidence any customer data was accessed or compromised.
While DDoS attacks are mainly a nuisance — making websites unreachable without penetrating them — security experts say they can disrupt the work of millions if they successfully interrupt the services of a software service giant like Microsoft on which so much global commerce depends.
It’s not clear if that’s what happened here.
“We really have no way to measure the impact if Microsoft doesn’t provide that info,” said Jake Williams, a prominent cybersecurity researcher and a former National Security Agency offensive hacker. Williams said he was not aware of Outlook previously being attacked at this scale.
“We know some resources were inaccessible for some, but not others. This often happens with DDoS of globally distributed systems,” Williams added. He said Microsoft’s apparent unwillingness to provide an objective measure of customer impact “probably speaks to the magnitude.”
Microsoft dubbed the attackers Storm-1359, using a designator it assigns to groups whose affiliation it has not yet established. Cybersecurity sleuthing tends to take time — and even then can be a challenge if the adversary is skilled.
Pro-Russian hacking groups including Killnet — which the cybersecurity firm Mandiant says is Kremlin-affiliated — have been bombarding government and other websites of Ukraine’s allies with DDoS attacks. In October, some U.S. airport sites were hit. Analyst Alexander Leslie of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said it’s unlikely Anonymous Sudan is located as it claims in Sudan, an African country. The group works closely with Killnet and other pro-Kremlin groups to spread pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation, he said.
Edward Amoroso, NYU professor and CEO of TAG Cyber, said the Microsoft incident highlights how DDoS attacks remain “a significant risk that we all just agree to avoid talking about. It’s not controversial to call this an unsolved problem.”
He said Microsoft’s difficulties fending of this particular attack suggest “a single point of failure.” The best defense against these attacks is to distribute a service massively, on a content distribution network for example.
Indeed, the techniques the attackers used are not old, said U.K. security researcher Kevin Beaumont. “One dates back to 2009,” he said.
Serious impacts from the Microsoft 365 office suite interruptions were reported on Monday June 5, peaking at 18,000 outage and problem reports on the tracker Downdetector shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time.
On Twitter that day, Microsoft said Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business were affected.
Attacks continued through the week, with Microsoft confirming on June 9 that its Azure cloud computing platform had been affected.
On June 8, the computer security news site BleepingComputer.com reported that cloud-based OneDrive file-hosting was down globally for a time.
Microsoft said at the time that desktop OneDrive clients were not affected, BleepingComputer reported.
The Canadian Press – Jun 17, 2023 / 11:00 am | Story: 432430
Photo: The Canadian Press
A Sunwing aircraft is parked at Montreal Trudeau airport in Montreal on Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
WestJet is planning to wind down Sunwing Airlines, integrating the low-cost carrier into its mainline business within two years as part of a plan to streamline operations.
In an internal memo obtained by The Canadian Press, Sunwing Airlines president Len Corrado says the change will unlock growth opportunities for the 18-year-old company as well as its employees.
The decision comes barely a week after WestJet opted to fold budget subsidiary Swoop’s operations under its flagship banner as well.
Both moves magnify the major consolidation of the Canadian aviation market that followed WestJet’s acquisition of Sunwing’s main airline and vacation divisions last month.
The memo gave no indication that Sunwing Vacations would also shut down, suggesting that WestJet planes could be flying Sunwing tour package customers to their destinations.
Last week, WestJet announced it would fold Swoop into its main business by late October as the country’s second-biggest airline recalibrates amid a fiercely competitive market.
The Canadian Press – Jun 17, 2023 / 10:00 am | Story: 432425
Photo: The Canadian Press
TD Bank says it has fixed the technical problems that kept some account holders from getting paid on Friday.
A representative for the bank says the outage mainly affected provinces west of Ontario, but customers “should now have full access to most bank services,” including delayed direct deposits.
TD blamed the day-long issue on computers failing to process a large volume of data — something it described as a “batch processing issue” that affected multiple systems.
The bank started getting inundated early Friday on social media with customers raising concerns about being unable to pay bills.
Some also said automatic withdrawals were sending their accounts into the negative.
TD says any fees incurred due to missing direct deposits would be refunded.
The Canadian Press – Jun 16, 2023 / 10:06 am | Story: 432263
Photo: The Canadian Press
A new report from RBC says the cost of filling a grocery cart is finally stabilizing, but don’t expect food prices to go back to pre-pandemic levels.
The report released this week says the main drivers of food inflation, such as global supply chain issues and transportation costs, have eased but prices won’t drop any time soon.
RBC says food prices have soared by 18 per cent over the past two years, adding to the strain on Canadian household budgets amid rising interest rates.
Supply chain bottlenecks, shipping costs and volatile prices of raw food commodities, such as wheat and oils, have stabilized and concerns about the impact of geopolitical strife — mainly the war in Ukraine — have eased.
But RBC warns that drought and other extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and could “meaningfully limit” farm production, which would affect the food supply chain.
The report points to shrinking livestock herd sizes in Canada and the United States as an example, after recent droughts forced some meat producers to sell off or slaughter cattle in large numbers.
The RBC report also says labour shortage issues, exacerbated by an aging population, and wage growth will keep food prices elevated.
The report says Canadians have been paying more for less food since early 2021 and that has lowered demand for pricier food items.
The Associated Press – Jun 16, 2023 / 6:55 am | Story: 432218
Photo: The Canadian Press
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.
China’s government on Friday rejected as “far-fetched and unprofessional” a report by a U.S. security firm that blamed Chinese-linked hackers for attacks on hundreds of public agencies, schools and other targets around the world.
A foreign ministry spokesperson repeated accusations that Washington carries out hacking attacks and complained the cybersecurity industry rarely reports on them.
Mandiant’s report came ahead of a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken aimed at repairing relations that have been strained by disputes over human rights, security and other irritants. Blinken’s visit was planned earlier this year but was canceled after what the U.S. government said was a Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States.
The report said hackers targeted email to engage in “espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.”
“The relevant content is far-fetched and unprofessional,” said the Chinese spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.
“American cybersecurity companies continue to churn out reports on so-called cyberattacks by other countries, which have been reduced to accomplices for the U.S. government’s political smear against other countries,” Wang said.
The latest attacks exploited a vulnerability in a Barracuda Networks email system and targeted foreign ministries in Southeast Asia, other government agencies, trade offices and academic organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to Mandiant.
It described the attacks as the biggest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a ”China-nexus threat actor” since a 2021 attack on Microsoft Exchange. That affected tens of thousands of computers.
China is regarded, along with the United States and Russia, as a leader in the development of computer hacking for military use. Security consultants say its military also supports hobbyist hacking clubs that might work for outsiders.
Barracuda announced on June 6 that some of its its email security appliances had been hacked as early as October, giving the intruders a back door to compromised networks.
Mandiant said the email attacks focused on issues that are priorities for China, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. It said the hackers searched for email accounts of people working for governments of political or strategic interest to China at the time they were participating in diplomatic meetings.
Earlier this year, Microsoft said state-backed Chinese hackers have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and could be laying the technical groundwork for the potential disruption of critical communications between the U.S. and Asia during future crises.
The Associated Press – Jun 16, 2023 / 6:50 am | Story: 432216
Photo: The Canadian Press
British antitrust regulators cleared Amazon’s purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot on Friday, but the $1.7 billion deal still faces scrutiny in the United States and Europe.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it decided not to escalate its initial investigation because it concluded that the deal would not result in a “substantial lessening of competition” within the United Kingdom.
Amazon said it was pleased with the result.
“We look forward to similar decisions from other regulators soon,” the company said in a statement.
Consumer groups have voiced concerns that Amazon’s purchase of Bedford, Massachusetts-based iRobot, which makes the popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, would widen the e-commerce giant’s dominance in the smart home market.
The acquisition is still facing a review in the U.S. by the Federal Trade Commission amid worries about Amazon’s growing market power. It’s also under scrutiny by the European Union’s executive arm, which opened a review of the deal this month.
The U.K. watchdog said in its decision that robot vacuum cleaners and the data they collect aren’t generally considered an important gateway to the emerging market for smart home devices.
It said iRobot has a modest U.K. market position, already faces “several significant rivals” and Amazon would have little incentive to give its products special treatment over rivals in its online store.
The Associated Press – Jun 16, 2023 / 6:43 am | Story: 432213
Photo: The Associated Press
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried may face two criminal trials after a federal judge on Thursday granted a request by prosecutors to delay a trial on some of the charges until next year.
Bankman-Fried faces trial in October on charges brought against him last year. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan set a March 11 trial date for him on newer charges filed earlier this year.
Kaplan chose to schedule two trials after prosecutors said they will only go ahead with the newer charges if authorities in the Bahamas — where Bankman-Fried was first arrested — agree to it.
The judge acted hours afer Bankman-Fried appeared before Kaplan as his lawyers argued for dismissal of charges alleging that he and other top executives cheated investors and looted FTX customer deposits, in part to fund lavish lifestyles. Kaplan seemed skeptical toward some of their arguments but didn’t immediately rule.
When one defense lawyer finished speaking, the judge told him: “I congratulate you on an extraordinarily imaginative argument.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thane Rehn told Kaplan charges brought in a rewritten indictment in February and again in March require approval from Bahamian authorities to comply with the terms of a U.S. Extradition Treaty that was activated when the man once viewed by some as a cryptocurrency visionary was extradited from the Bahamas in December.
Those new charges included a claim that Bankman-Fried directed the payment of $40 million in bribes to a Chinese official or Chinese officials to free $1 billion in cryptocurrency that was frozen in early 2021.
Rehn said prosecutors will not continue with the new charges unless it obtains the waiver, citing “an interest in observing diplomatic relationships.” He said discussions with Bahamian authorities prior to the unsealing of the superseding indictment led prosecutors to believe the waiver will be delivered.
He said a trial based on the original indictment will last four to five weeks, about a week shorter than it would be with the new charges included.
Bankman-Fried, 31 — referred to by crypto enthusiasts as “SBF” — has pleaded not guilty to all charges as he awaits trial at his parent’s home in Palo Alto, California, where the terms of his $250 million personal recognizance bond severely limit his online communications and ability to move money. If convicted, he could face years in prison. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has called it “one of the biggest frauds in American history.”
In asking the judge to dismiss the indictment, his lawyers have argued that the charges are flawed, saying they are duplicative, vague and non-specific and the kinds of things that usually result in regulatory enforcement actions rather than criminal charges.
“They’re trying to criminalize a civil matter,” argued attorney Christian Everdell as he tried to poke holes in various charges facing his client, including a bank fraud conspiracy charge. It was Everdell who prompted the judge to praise his “extraordinarily imaginative argument.”
Prosecutors contend that Bankman-Fried and other executives in his cryptocurrency operation cheated investors and looted FTX customer deposits to make lavish real estate purchases, donate money to politicians and make risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm.
FTX entered bankruptcy in November when the global exchange ran out of money after the equivalent of a bank run.
The Canadian Press – Jun 16, 2023 / 6:23 am | Story: 432209
Photo: The Canadian Press
A Canadian study suggests an association between household use of gas stoves and a higher risk of asthma in some kids. However, like other recent studies on the issue, the results were inconsistent.
Researchers acknowledged the findings suggest some health effects with gas stove use, but no direct connection to childhood asthma could be drawn.
That echoes similar findings elsewhere, but a study published last year in the United States associating gas stoves with childhood asthma added to the confusion.
WHAT WE CAN GLEAN FROM THE MOST RECENT DATA
The Canadian study, published June 9 in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, was based on questionnaires conducted by the CHILD Cohort Study to collect data on nearly 3,000 children born between 2009 and 2012 in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto. The overall data in the project allows scientists to track the participants’ environment and health, including onset of asthma, obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases over many years.
Dr. Padmaja Subbarao, a respirologist and study co-author, said 5.5 per cent of children living in a Toronto home with an electric stove were diagnosed with asthma but that jumped to just over 10 per cent at age five for kids whose families used a gas stove.
She said asthma cases were likely higher in Toronto compared with Vancouver, where they were not statistically significant, because a milder climate in the West Coast city means people tend to open their windows, even in winter. That allows pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides emitted by gas stoves to escape outdoors instead of staying inside and potentially irritating the lungs.
“It shows you that it’s not as simple as saying you can’t have a gas stove,” Subbarao said. “It really depends on how you use it and the environmental characteristics that you live in.”
Gas stoves have become a hot topic after several studiesconnected their use to childhood asthma.
A meta analysis of various studies published last December in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggested 12.7 per cent of childhood asthma cases in the United States are associated with gas stoves. Researchers said that is as toxic as second-hand smoke.
But multiple factors could contribute to asthma cases, including whether a kitchen lacks a range hood above the gas stove to vent pollution.
Children participating in the Canadian research were assessed for asthma when they were three years old and again at age five.
The researchers are trying to determine whether genetic factors make some children more vulnerable to asthma through exposure to pollutants produced by gas stoves.
“We’re looking for gene-environment interaction so we can actually answer those important questions,” Subbarao said.
Dr. Theo Moraes, another study co-author and head of the division of respiratory medicine at SickKids Hospital in Toronto, said that among the entire cohort of children, a statistical difference in asthma is only seen at age three, not age five, for those living with gas stoves versus electric stoves.
SHOULD YOU DITCH YOUR GAS STOVE?
Michael Brauer, a CHILD investigator and professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health, co-wrote a commentary in the Lancet in 1996 about gas stoves and respiratory health. But he said that despite much more research into that topicsince then, the overall evidence showing a definitive link remains “murky.”
Brauer said much of the buzz around gas stoves may be linked to their association with climate change and that may be a better reason to stop using the appliances, which are connected to a supply system that leaks tiny amounts of the greenhouse gas methane.
“If you have the resources, there are several reasons to get rid of a gas stove,” said Brauer, who was not involved in the research.
HOW COULD ANY NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF A GAS STOVE BE PREVENTED?
“Everybody needs to pay more attention to ventilation,” said Jeff Brook, who leads CHILD’s physical environment component and is an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Hood fans that ventilate fumes to the outside could be considered the most important appliance in a kitchen but often get “short shrift,” said Brook, adding cheaper versions can be noisy so people tend not to use them.
Older gas stoves with a pilot light that stays on are a constant source of nitrogen oxides, even when they’re off, but opening a window whenever possible is a good option in the absence of proper ventilation in the kitchen, said Brook, a co-author of the paper.
WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?
Pressure cookers, microwaves and electric stoves, including induction stoves, which cook food quickly, are options to gas stoves.
Dr. Melissa Lem, a Vancouver family physician and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said that from her perspective as a parent, choosing an induction stove would be a better, more energy-efficient way to cook without the burning of fossil fuels.
Lem said some people are putting a portable induction cooktop on a cutting board they place on top of their gas stove as a more affordable way to stop cooking with gas.
The Canadian Press – Jun 15, 2023 / 3:08 pm | Story: 432139
Photo: The Canadian Press
RONA Inc. says it’s eliminating 500 jobs across Canada in a bid to simplify its organizational structure. A man carries building supplies from a RONA store in Toronto on July 31, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
RONA Inc. says it’s eliminating 500 jobs across Canada in a bid to simplify its organizational structure.
The Boucherville, Que.-based home improvement retailer says in a press release Thursday evening that it needed to adapt to reflect new market realities amid a slowing economy.
The Canadian economy has been showing some signs of weakness amid higher interest rates as the central bank seeks to quell inflation.
However, GDP grew at an annualized rate of 3.1 per cent in the first quarter, beating expectations.
The Canadian consumer has proven resilient amid tightening conditions, with household spending helping to buoy the economy’s growth in the first quarter.
In November, Lowe’s announced it was selling its Canadian retail business, including RONA, to New York-based private equity firm Sycamore Partners.
RONA says it operates or services around 425 corporate and affiliated stores under different banners across the country. It says it has 22,000 employees.
The company says decisions like these are never taken lightly, and it will support affected employees throughout the transition.
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