Mid-Week Post

In medias res ...





Oh, dear: 

At least 26 people were injured, including one seriously, after a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Japan’s northwestern region late Tuesday, causing landslides and power outages in some areas.

The quake hit Niigata Prefecture on Tuesday night, recording a maximum of upper 6 on the Japanese earthquake intensity scale of 7.

Seventeen people were injured in Yamagata Prefecture, four each in Niigata and Miyagi prefectures, and one in Ishikawa Prefecture, according to a Kyodo News tally Wednesday. There were no reports of missing people, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

Landslides were reported in Murakami, Niigata Prefecture, and Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture. The Meteorological Agency warned of potential building collapse and more landslides as there is a chance additional similar quakes will hit Yamagata and Niigata prefectures over the following week, while rain is expected in part of the region Wednesday.

Damn and blast your eyes, global warming!:

It's just days before the summer solstice, but snow is still falling in parts of B.C. and western Alberta.

The surprise snowfall on sections of the Okanagan Connector was seen on DriveBC highway cameras on Wednesday morning.

Snow is visible at the Pennask Summit on Highway 97C, around 75 kilometres west of Kelowna and at an elevation of 1,717 metres.

Snow also covers the highway at Elkhart, which is at 1,621 metres. 

  

"Right now, we've actually got a line of snow showers even with some lightning in there," said Lisa Erven, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.   

"We're going to see the continuation of snow at least through the next couple hours here as these convective cells continue to move over the area."

Also - oh my God! Ice melting?! In summer?!: 

This image taken June 13, 2019 in north west Greenland shows a team of sled dogs appearing to run on water. In a tweet, Toboe said rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks results in melted water on top.

I'll just leave these right here:

(Sidebar: from the comments relating to the above article:

 

**

Think Greenland’s ice sheet is small today?

It was smaller — as small as it has ever been in recent history — from 3-5,000 years ago, according to scientists who studied the ice sheet’s history using a new technique they developed for interpreting the Arctic fossil record.

“What’s really interesting about this is that on land, the atmosphere was warmest between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago, maybe as late as 4,000 years ago. The oceans, on the other hand, were warmest between 5-3,000 years ago,” said Jason Briner, PhD, University at Buffalo associate professor of geology, who led the study.

“What it tells us is that the ice sheets might really respond to ocean temperatures,” he said. “It’s a clue to what might happen in the future as the Earth continues to warm.”

**

After reconstructing southern Greenland’s climate record over the past 3,000 years, a Northwestern University team found that it was relatively warm when the Norse lived there between 985 and 1450 C.E., compared to the previous and following centuries.

**

In the 2000s, Jakobshavn Isbrae was the fastest flowing ice stream on the island, travelling at 17km a year.

As it sped to the ocean, its front end also retreated and thinned, dropping in height by as much as 20m year.

But now it’s all change. Jakobshavn is travelling much more slowly, and its trunk has even begun to thicken and lengthen.

“It’s a complete reversal in behaviour and it wasn’t predicted,” said Dr Anna Hogg from Leeds University and the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM).

That pipeline will never get built as long as Justin stays in office:

The federal government has announced it is moving ahead with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, ending months of speculation over the development and offering some relief to the embattled oil and gas sector amid a years-long pipeline bottleneck.

Called it:

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion “will not be built.”

So said Will George, a Tsleil-Waututh member and leader of Protect the Inlet, an organization that describes itself as the “spiritual home of the resistance against the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project in the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples.”

While Canadians were cheering for some stupid basketball game, their government has been in the process of resurrecting the censorial and punitive Section 13:

(Sidebar: aptly titled.)

Justice Minister David Lametti says he will look “very carefully” at a recommendation by a Liberal-dominated House of Commons committee that the government start consultations to revive a controversial hate speech law repealed in 2013 over free speech concerns.

It is the latest sign the Liberals are seriously considering bringing back a version of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, but one updated to target hate speech spread through social media.

Section 13 made it a discriminatory practice to convey messages over the phone or internet that contain “any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt,” as long as those people were “identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

Canada already has Criminal Code provisions that prohibit the incitement of hatred against identifiable groups, the promotion of genocide and the distribution of hate propaganda. A conviction comes with heavy penalties, including prison time. Given free speech concerns, however, the charges require the sign-off of an attorney general before being laid.

This might explain Liberal voters:

A new study suggests pregnant women who use cannabis are at greater risk of delivering their baby early, but researchers say more work is needed to establish a direct link between cannabis and preterm births.

The work comes from researchers at the Ottawa Hospital, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, the provincial birth registry BORN Ontario and the University of Ottawa. They looked at 661,617 women who gave birth between 2012 and 2017 in Ontario – before recreational cannabis became legal.

In the study, 9,427 women – or 1.4 per cent of the group – reported using cannabis while pregnant. Of those, the rate of preterm births was 12 per cent compared to 6 per cent among non-users.

Some people are more special than others:

The federal government will adopt changes to its criminal justice legislation, Bill C-75, that will require judges to consider harsher sentences in cases of violence against Indigenous women, according to a motion from Justice Minister David Lametti.

Lametti told reporters on Monday that the changes to the bill are “in the spirit of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls,” which made several recommendations for changes to the Criminal Code aimed at applying stiffer penalties to those who commit crimes against Indigenous women. ...

But the changes are a source of concern for Jonathan Rudin, program director of Toronto-based Aboriginal Legal Services, who believes the amendments will simply result in “more incarceration,” and will have a negative impact on vulnerable Indigenous people.

Oh, just give them a carte blanche to commit crimes and get it over with.





I'm sure it's nothing to worry about:

Statistics Canada says the annual pace of inflation picked up in May as the consumer price index rose 2.4 per cent compared with a year ago, its largest increase since October last year. The rise compared with a 2.0 per cent increase in April.

Economists had expected an increase of 2.1 per cent for May, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.

All eight major components of the index rose compared with a year ago. Food prices rose 3.5 per cent as fresh vegetable prices climbed 16.7 per cent, while transportation prices gained 3.1 per cent as the cost of air transportation added 8.9 per cent.

I'm sure his not running again and the Liberals' scandal-filled government are entirely coincidental:

Yesterday, Liberal MP Geng Tan – who had already been nominated – announced he wouldn’t be running again.

The announcement came as a surprise, and led to more questions about what Liberal MPs must be seeing on the ground considering how many have decided that they won’t be running again under Trudeau.

Now, just a day later, another Liberal MP is jumping ship.

Frank Baylis, the MP for Pierrefonds-Roxboro, says he won’t be running again.

Three Russians and a Ukrainian have been charged with bringing down Malaysia Airlines 17:

Three Russians and a Ukrainian will face murder charges for the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine which killed 298 people, in a trial to start in the Netherlands next March, an investigation team said on Wednesday.

The suspects are likely to be tried in absentia, however, as the Netherlands has said Russia has not cooperated with the investigation and is not expected to hand anyone over.

(Sidebar: quelle surprise.)

“These suspects are seen to have played an important role in the death of 298 innocent civilians,” said Dutch Chief Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke.

“Although they did not push the button themselves, we suspect them of close cooperation to get the (missile launcher) where it was, with the aim to shoot down an airplane.”

 
It took them long enough to find scapegoats.





On the Korean Peninsula:

Russia and China on Tuesday delayed a U.S. request for a U.N. Security Council sanctions committee to demand an immediate halt to deliveries of refined petroleum to North Korea over accusations Pyongyang violated a U.N. cap, diplomats said.

Once again, Russia and China are moving North Korea around like a chess piece.





 South Korea, under Moon, is reverting to its former passive stance with North Korea by offering it aid and turning a blind eye to any incursion, even a minor one. Kim Jong-Un has given South Korea no reason to trust it (as usual). Moon should not end his administration on a bad note:

South Korea said Wednesday it will send 50,000 tons of rice to North Korea via the World Food Program to help the country cope with a severe food shortage.

The isolated, impoverished North — which is under several sets of sanctions over its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs — has long struggled to feed itself and suffers chronic food shortages.

“The government cannot ignore the plight among North Korean people,” said Seoul’s unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations.

It will be the first time the South has provided food aid to the North since 2010, when it sent 5,000 tons of rice across the border.

**

South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo on Wednesday strongly reprimanded the military for its failure to detect a North Korean boat that crossed the de facto maritime border and reached a coastal city in the South.

The symptom of a graying country:

Japan has the world’s lowest ratio of people of working age to those aged 65 or over, according to a U.N. report released Monday.

While the ratio, a measure of the burden placed on the working population by the nonworking elderly, is falling worldwide, Japan stands out with just 1.8 people aged 25 to 64 for each person aged 65 or over, according to the report, called “World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights.”

“Japan in 2019 has the lowest potential support ratio of all countries or areas with at least 90,000 inhabitants,” said the report from the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

In comparison, the ratio stands at 3.3 in Australia and New Zealand, and 3.0 in Europe and North America. Sub-Saharan Africa has a ratio of 11.7.

By 2050, it is projected that 48 countries, mainly from Europe, North America, East Asia and Southeast Asia, will have support ratios below 2.

“These low values underscore the potential impact of population aging on the labor market and economic performance as well as the fiscal pressures that many countries are likely to face in the coming decades in relation to the public systems of health care, pensions and social protection schemes for older persons,” the report said.