Tag: canada

‘Performative clown’: GOP candidates slammed for assuming terrorism caused car explosion

Two Republican candidates seeking higher office were both shouting terrorism and publicly shamed.

GOP presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy jumped the terrorism gun — early after a car bulleted toward a U.S.-Canada bridge checkpoint and then smashed and blew up causing the deaths of two people.

Fox News quickly called the event a “terror attack” and said the car was “full of explosives.”

They later backed off its claim of a “terror attack” and instead labeled the motive as “unclear.”

“I’ve been saying it for a long time & will say it again: we must secure our *NORTHERN* border too,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “It’s the forgotten frontier of the border crisis in our country.”

Kari Lake, the failed Arizona pro-Trump gubernatorial candidate who is now running for Senate, also shouted terrorism.

“This looks like at attempted terrorist attack along our Northern border,” she tweeted. “Our worst fears are being realized. @JoeBiden’s open border invites chaos & misery into our country.”

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Sources Tell Fox News NY Vehicle Explosion at Rainbow Bridge Border Crossing is Attempted Terror Attack

On Wednesday morning, a vehicle explosion, thought to be an attempted terror attack, occurred on the Rainbow Bridge which connects Niagra Falls, New York to Niagra Falls, Canada.

A spokesperson for the FBI said: “The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating a vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, a border crossing between the US and Canada in Niagara Falls.”

The FBI is investigating the incident; sources told Fox News’ Alexis McAdams the explosion “was an attempted terrorist attack. The FBI is coordinating with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation. As this situation is very fluid, that’s all we can say at this time.”

Explosives were found in the vehicle that left the two vehicle occupants dead. One border officer and one civilian, a 27-year-old man, were injured in the blast at transported to Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital.

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The QAnon Queen’s Compound Is Now a Ghost Town

The QAnon Queen of Canada has left her compound in rural Saskatchewan…. For now, at least.

Romana Didulo, a cult leader who has convinced hundreds of people across the world she’s the true queen of Canada (among other eccentric things), has been living in an abandoned school in the small Saskatchewan town of Richmound for over a month.

But a video sent to VICE News by a local shows Didulo’s team unloading belongings including surveillance gear from the school into several motorhomes and vehicles. One local told VICE that the school, which once almost always had cult members outside filming anyone who came close, is now a ghost town. 

“A flag was taken down and the lights and cameras are off the school,” Shauna Sehn, a resident in the town, told VICE News.

Brad Miller, Richmound’s mayor, told VICE News that earlier in the day bylaw and building inspectors went to the school for an inspection but were denied. 

“Shortly after that Romano’s RV left town as well as a few vehicles,” said Miller. “The remaining people are scurrying around packing.”  

Miller added that believes Didulo and her followers are camped out at a farm not too far out of town. For now the town holds its breath hoping the cult is truly gone. 

For weeks Didulo faced fierce resistance from the townsfolk, who held several large protests to get the cult out of the school, but it seemed their honking and shouting had little effect. At the time Miller told VICE News that he was working multiple angles to have the cult removed, several including working bylaws. 

In the livestream that Didulo hosts—primarily a way for her to ask her followers for money—her spokesperson said the group was invited to a follower’s farm and promised they would be returning to the school shortly. 

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Mind-altering ketamine becomes new pain treatment, despite little research or regulation

As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy.

Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth services offering the medication as a treatment for pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions. The generic drug can be purchased cheaply and prescribed by most physicians and some nurses, regardless of their training.

With limited research on its effectiveness against pain, some experts worry the U.S. may be repeating mistakes that gave rise to the opioid crisis: overprescribing a questionable drug that carries significant safety and abuse risks.

“There’s a paucity of options for pain and so there’s a tendency to just grab the next thing that can make a difference,” said Dr. Padma Gulur, a Duke University pain specialist who is studying ketamine’s use. “A medical journal will publish a few papers saying, ‘Oh, look, this is doing good things,’ and then there’s rampant off-label use, without necessarily the science behind it.”

When Gulur and her colleagues tracked 300 patients receiving ketamine at Duke, more than a third of them reported significant side effects that required professional attention, such as hallucinations, troubling thoughts and visual disturbances.

Ketamine also didn’t result in lower rates of opioid prescribing in the months following treatment, a common goal of therapy, according to Gulur. Her research is under review for medical journal publication.

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A QAnon Cult Set Up a Compound in a Small Town. The Locals Are Fighting Back.

Hugh Everding, a bald hulking man of about 6’4”, stares out of the kitchen window of his bungalow as police vehicle after police vehicle rolls down the street headed towards a check stop manned by a half-dozen armed cops. 

Every entry point into this no-stoplight town has such a check stop, ready to interrogate both locals and miscreants on what their damn business here is. There’s little doubt that at this moment, Richmound, Saskatchewan, population 130, is the most fortified town in all of Canada. 

Seeing another cop car, Hugh takes a sip of his craft beer and turns to us and says that no matter the police presence, it’s just dead around these parts. 

“You can hear a mouse get a hard on out here,” he said. “Calm before the storm, I guess.”  

But you can always spot a storm brewing in the Prairies. In Hugh’s case, it was just across the street, where the so-called QAnon Queen of Canada and her followers had taken over an abandoned school. 

And in less than 24 hours, the town was ready to go to war with the cult next door. 

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Police Raid Man’s Home For Heating It With S9, Charged With Intentional Climate Change

The Bitcoin mining industry is being thrown into chaos as a Canadian man has been arrested for heating his home with an Antminer S9. The man posted a video of his setup on Twitter which lead to law enforcement visiting his home and arresting him. He faces up to 3 months in jail and $600 in fines for “Causing distress to the community” and “intentionally warming the climate.”

The officers raiding the home arrived heavily armed, and even shot the man’s dog who was barking in the hallway after they kicked the door down. Body cam footage shows police laughing after shooting the dog, and one officer exclaimed, “Wow I finally got my first one.” Unfortunately, in Canada, shooting peoples pets is a protected action under qualified immunity.

Canada has been a hotbed for Bitcoin mining, but now many miners are fearful they too will be charged with similar charges. The Canadian government has been unclear about what their intentions are and whether this applies to all Bitcoin miners or just people who post their miners on Twitter. There are also rumors that the Canadian government is going to be rolling out an emissions system to test miners for carbon production, and will be requiring registration.

Many have pointed out how similar Bitcoin miners are to other applications such as space heaters, large data center servers, and just about any application that consumes electricity. Bitcoin miners produce just as much carbon as electric vehicles, yet they are being treated very differently, suggesting the move is targeted. Despite that, the issue of climate change is of upmost concern. If sea levels rise, it will destroy all the billionaires beach front property and secret Caribbean islands.

Elizabeth Warren applauded the move and stated, “1 s9 running emits 4 units of climate change an hour. 1 Bitcoin transaction emits 16 units of climate change. We must be like Canada and stop the madness.” Senate Republicans are currently organizing to censor Warren’s comments on the subject until she passes a basic literacy test.

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Canada Will Legalize Medically Assisted Dying For People Addicted to Drugs

Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.” 

The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. 

Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”, such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering—excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. 

The contentious idea of including people who are addicted to drugs is being discussed this week at a conference for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in Victoria, British Columbia.  

“I don’t think it’s fair, and the government doesn’t think it’s fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness,” said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health, who is presenting a framework for assessing people with substance use disorders for MAID at the conference.  “As a subset of that, it’s not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally.” 

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Canada Plots to Increase Online Regulation, Target Search and Social Media Algorithms

Canada is taking steps towards potentially intrusive regulation of artificial intelligence as it pertains to its application in search and social media services. The government’s intentions have been revealed, which includes AI application way beyond the realm of generative AI similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Industry giants such as Google and Facebook, who utilize AI for search results, translation provisions, and customer taste recognition respectively, are among the contenders lined up in the regulatory intent with the pro-censorship government intent on having a say on how these algorithms work.

The information comes by way of Minister François-Philippe Champagne of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) in a letter submitted to the Industry committee analyzing Bill C-27—the privacy reform and AI regulation bill. Precise amendments remain shielded from scrutiny, however, as the governmental body keeps the proposed changes under wraps.

We obtained a copy of the original bill for you here.

The existing framework in Bill C-27 leaves the identification of AI mechanisms that can be classified into the “high-impact” category to future regulatory proceedings.

Bill C-27, by treating search and social media results as “high-impact” systems, is likely to raise eyebrows as the government’s push towards regulating technology has so far been assertive of greater control over content and therefore speech.

Non-compliance, under this proposal, may invite penalties proportional to 3% of gross global revenues.

The legislation veers into controversial territory by infusing the regulation of content moderation and discoverability prioritization into the matrix, in unexpected ways. It attempts to parallel these issues to bias accusation during recruitment or when used by law enforcement, invoking substantial surprise. Consequently, Canada’s rules, although they claim to align more closely with the EU, seem to set the country apart, leaning more towards censorship and less towards free speech.

The news comes on the back of Canada’s more recent online regulations that have raised alarm.

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‘QAnon queen’ moves cult to remote town and threatens locals with ‘publicly broadcast executions’

The Canadian town of Richmound, Saskatchewan, has been reeling ever since Romana Didulo — the self-proclaimed true Queen of Canada who leads a following of people who believe her claim — took up residence in an abandoned school, Vice News reported.

The cult, which has been linked to QAnon, has a contentious relationship with the townspeople after a failed effort to get the group out.

The cult sent threatening cease and desist letters to multiple town officials that warned “failure to Cease and Desist, IMMEDIATELY, from your Rothchild/CCP based communistic, unfair, demoralizing, and immoral activities and behaviors while “serving the (We the People)” and “before the (We the People)” under the present Natural Law WILL surely bring forth judgment upon yourselves and if found guilty of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ or ‘Treason’ you WILL face publicly broadcast executions upon yourselves, and underserved devastation upon your children, grandchildren and families.”

“One specific thing that was said was that our kids, grandkids, and school would watch the executions,’ Richmound Mayor Brad Miller told Vice News. “This is offside. These threats should be taken seriously, there is no room for error here!”

From Vice News: “Didulo is a cult figure who grew out of the QAnon movement. What separates her from many of her similar conspiracy leaders is she was able to take her online following offline. Since early 2022 Didulo has been on the road traveling the country and meeting her followers in towns across Canada. She’s accompanied by a die-hard group of followers who follow her bidding and, according to former members of the cult who spoke to VICE News, are abused in a myriad of ways by Didulo.”

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Canada apologizes for honoring another veteran from unit that fought with Nazis

Canada’s governor general apologized Tuesday afternoon for awarding one of the country’s highest honors to a Ukrainian immigrant who served in the same Nazi unit during World War II as the 98-year-old who was honored last month in the Canadian Parliament, an incident which sparked international outrage.

The statement from the governor general —  the representative of the British monarchy in Canada — concerned Peter Savaryn, who served as chancellor of the University of Alberta from 1982 to 1986 and in 1987 was appointed to the Order of Canada. The award is akin to the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, and is considered the second-highest distinction for Canadians, topped only by the Order of Merit available to all citizens of the British Commonwealth. 

Responding to an inquiry from the Forward, the statement from Governor General Mary Simon expressed “deep regret” about Savaryn’s appointment. A spokesperson said the office is also now reviewing two other honors it gave Savaryn: the Golden Jubilee (awarded in 2002) and Diamond Jubilee (awarded in 2012) medals.  

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