Security forces

A Canadian public inquiry concluded today that authorities should have known an Air India flight in 1985, which was blown up killing 329 people, was a likely terrorist target. The bombing of Air India flight 182 remains one of the world’s deadliest terrorist strikes. It is the largest case of mass murder in Canadian history.

Former supreme court justice John Major said today that a cascading series of errors contributed to the failure of Canada’s police and security forces to prevent the atrocity. “The level of error, incompetence, and inattention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents,” Major said in a five-volume report.

The Air India flight from Montreal to London, originating in Vancouver, exploded and crashed off Ireland on 23 June, 1985. An hour earlier, a bomb in baggage intended for another Air India flight exploded in Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers. The attacks were blamed on Sikh militants based in British Columbia who, prosecutors said, sought revenge for a 1984 raid by Indian forces on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikh’s holiest site. About 800 Sikhs, including militants taking refuge, lost their lives.

Canadian intelligence officials had apparently learned of the plot by Sikh separatists in Canada and India to launch an attack. “There were individuals in the Sikh community who claimed to have knowledge about the bombing and its perpetrators,” said Major.

“The agencies failed to obtain that information, to preserve its use as evidence or to offer adequate protection to those individuals. Instead they engaged in turf wars,” Major said.

Inderit Singh Reyat, who was convicted of manslaughter for the bombings, remains the only suspect ever convicted. Two other accused were brought to trial, but never convicted.

Testimony from current and former members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service painted a picture of strained relations between the two agencies in the 1980s, with vital wiretap tapes erased, leads left to grow cold, investigators quitting in frustration and crucial witnesses reluctant to co-operate because they feared for their lives. Air transport experts told of security lapses by Air India and Canadian airport authorities and regulators.

Major said holes in the country’s security systems still need to be fixed. He recommended greater powers for the national security adviser to set security policies and priorities, and to oversee communication between agencies. He called for improved police work, intelligence operations, airline security and the conduct of anti-terrorist trials.

The inquiry did not have a mandate to identify the perpetrators of the crime, but its job was to determine what went wrong and what can be done to prevent a similar tragedy in the future.

Major’s report also recommended compensation for the families who, he said, were often treated as adversaries.

“I stress this is a Canadian atrocity,” Major said. “For too long, the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness.”

Record-breaking heat that has been beating down on the Caribbean for the past few months poses a grave threat to regional food security. Unprecedented temperatures are impacting soil and water, worker productivity and income, food prices and trade— with consequences for the availability, accessibility and affordability of major crops, fish stocks, livestock… and even imported food.

Driven by climate change, a strong El Niño climate pattern and a much warmer than usual tropical north Atlantic, heat waves—temperatures that exceed the 90th percentile of the region’s historical range— have affected both marine and terrestrial food sources.

“Through successive COPs [United Nations Climate Change Conferences] we have heard repeated warnings about the imperative of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” says Dr. Didacus Jules, Director General of the Organization of Eastern European States (OECS).

“Global warming is creating hell on earth for Small Island Developing States (SIDS)— a rapid onslaught apocalypse.”

The Caribbean Regional Climate Center reported record-breaking temperatures across the region between May and August 2023, with forecasts of continued heat stress in the region through October, with ongoing increasing temperatures, humidity and frequency of heatwaves expected to rival prior records. Higher than normal temperatures are forcasted to extend into 2024, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that these weather extremes will become the “ new norm .”

Between the months of June and August, the mean temperature anomaly in Barbados was 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than normal, with 87 days of heat that Climate Central says was at least three times more likely to have been caused by climate change. In Jamaica, the mean temperature anomaly was 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than normal, with 89 days in which the intense temperature was attributable to climate change.

The latest Economy and Development Report (RED) issued by the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) launched in September predicts that “average temperatures will continue to rise, rainfall patterns will undergo increasing disruptions, and many parts of the region will become drier.”

According to Pablo Brassilio, CAF principal economist, aridity has been increasing considerably in the region and drought is expected to double. If emissions continue at this rate, 80% of land in the region will be dry by 2100.

Rising temperatures have already reduced yields and are expected to play a role in increased pests and diseases, changed patterns of erosion and accretion, weed proliferation, declines in labor productivity, crop quality and long-term production, leading to crop failures as well as stunted growth, compromised health and large-scale losses of livestock and poultry. And for a water insecure region that depends almost entirely on rainfall for irrigation— with 70% of all water usage going towards agriculture— drier than average conditions can multiply the negative impacts of persistently high temperatures.

In Barbados and Jamaica, for example, 88% of all crops rely on rainwater, while in St. Vincent, Trinidad & Tobago and in St. Lucia, crop irrigation depends almost entirely on rainwater.

In St. Vincent, where farmers are still reeling from the destruction caused by the catastrophic volcanic eruption of La Soufrière in 2020, a long-term drought has reduced yields, and created total crop failure in some instances. Soil nutrients and irrigation systems have been experiencing significant pressure, with worrisome implications for the future.

“We produce most of our vegetables in the open field as opposed to shade houses,” says Saboto Caesar, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Agriculture Minister. “The intense heat over the past weeks is having a negative impact on vegetable production just ahead of the Christmas period which is categorized as a season of ery high demand for vegetables. It is becoming more challenging in this period of climate change to ensure that food is available, accessible, and affordable.”

Reports from Antigua & Barbuda refer to an inability to produce feed for livestock due to insufficient precipitation, while the Jamaican Agricultural Society has reported that many small poultry farmers have recorded significant losses, raising an alarm for a potential chicken shortage for the Christmas season.

Diana Francis of The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in Trinidad & Tobago reports that , “In the past few weeks, there have been several reports of death among poultry in Trinidad; crops in fields wilting from heat from above and below; and farm workers being cautioned to wear sunscreen and drink water in response to Met Office warnings about the continuing heat wave.”

In Trinidad, Satyananad Maharaj, Head of the Aranguez United Farmers Association says that local farmers have been contending with increases in costs and pests and reduced irrigation water and warns that heat-sensitive produce such as tomatoes, cauliflower and sweet peppers might soon be in short supply.

“If this type of weather continues, farmers may decide to save their money rather than plant and lose their labor and capital,” he says.

Elsewhere in Trinidad, farmer Alpha Sennon, says that excessive heat and little rainfall has resulted in a decline in his dasheen bush production, while Barbadian farmer John Jones says that crop selection has been affected, as some crops such as leafy greens are unable to grow adequately in the excessive heat.

“The heat affects plants, animals and humans tremendously,” says Sennon, who is also Founder and CEO of WHYFARM , a Trinidad-based nonprofit organization specializing in agricultural educational entertainment.

“The heat reduces soil water retention, preventing crop growth, which affects production; workers get dehydrated and tired, which affects production and incomes; animals need more mechanical and electrical components for their daily well-being, which affects production and costs; and after crops have been harvested, they tend to start deteriorating before they reach the grocery shelf, creating added losses, which in turn affect prices.”

The Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) indicates that the heat wave is posing a major threat to local agricultural yields and prices. With impacts extending out to sea. At one point, local fish vendors were forced to sell 10-packs of flying fish as high as $17 and $22 US dollars to turn a profit on waning stocks of Barbados’ national fish, which scientists say are migrating to cooler waters.

“As our temperature records unprecedented levels of heat, water scarcity and drought are impacting food security, and ocean warming is resulting in the bleaching of coral reefs, affecting fisheries,” says the OECS Director General.

This past summer, regional waters warmed up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit— two degrees higher than the long-term average, and in late August, the Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) warned that ocean temperatures would remain well above average for at least another three months, posing a major threat to coral reefs and marine life.

The extreme conditions have extended far beyond the waters of the import-dependent region, creating similarly adverse consequences to the food systems of trade partners and the world’s major food supplying countries.

For countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)— which import approximately three-quarters of what they eat— climate-related pressures on food systems elsewhere in the world, including in the United States, the Caribbean’s closest trade partner, have had spillover effects on regional food prices.

According to the Washington D.C.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the past three months were the hottest on its 174-year record. In addition to climate impacts on crop yields and worker productivity, heat waves have created increased insurance premiums for U.S. food producers. Persistent drought has also affected transport on shipping routes, due to lower water levels in areas such as the Panama Canal, requiring shippers to lighten their vessel loads.

Outside of the Americas, severe droughts experienced by Asia’s major food producing countries have pushed rice prices to their highest levels in well over a decade, while droughts in the Mediterranean have caused a decline in global stocks of olive oil, causing prices to skyrocket by more than 130% in the past year.

Barclays reports that severe weather has been the main disrupter of food prices in recent times.

Persistent droughts “could lead to regional shortfalls and, with poor countries unable to afford higher prices, food security issues,” said Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, in an interview with the New York Times.

Severe and persistent heat waves pose an added threat to Caribbean populations in the context of rising prices and supply shocks associated with COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, coupled with pre-existing socio-economic and environmental challenges associated with poverty, limited land availability, water insecurity, and the inter-related threats of sea level rise, tropical cyclones, and floods.

By April 2023, Caribbean food inflation rose by as much as 67% in Suriname, 17% in Trinidad & Tobago, 11% in Jamaica, 6.9% in Guyana, and 4.3% in Barbados.

The Caribbean food security and livelihoods survey conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the CARICOM Secretariat reveals that 98% of respondents felt the impact of high food prices in the three months leading up to May 2023, and 42% reported being affected by climate-related hazards during the prior month.

The survey results reveal that by May 2023 some 3.7 million people, or 52% of the English-speaking Caribbean, was already food insecure.

“Extreme heat carries enormous implications for society’s most vulnerable and is just one of the latest manifestations of the climate crisis and its impact on the Caribbean,” says Regis Chapman, Representative and Country Director of the WFP Caribbean Multi-Country Office.

“We’re also seeing more frequent and severe storms and increasing frequency of droughts. The inherent risk in the Caribbean has a significant impact on those employed in agriculture, negatively impacting the capacity of the region to reduce its reliance on imported food. National systems are therefore so important, particularly when coordinated across sectors for early warning, anticipatory action and for response to these climatic shocks. This is why the World Food Programme works with disaster management, social protection, and food systems in the Caribbean, to ensure that vulnerable people, including small holder farmers, are supported.”

Extreme heat and drought have real implications for labor productivity, particularly among smallholder farmers who comprise up to 10% of the labor force in countries such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia, and 15% of the labor force in Jamaica and Guyana.

An analysis of the circumstances of more than half a million workers conducted by Oxford University researcher, Dr. Carolin Kroeger reveals that the “number of hot days in the last week is associated with significantly higher levels of moderate-to-severe food insecurity.”

And households that eat what they produce are the most vulnerable.

According to Kroeger, “Heat-related physical strain and health problems limit peoples’ ability to work and earn an income, thus limiting their ability to afford to buy food.”

For countries in the region, excessive heat threatens to derail development objectives and progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Climate adaptation and other measures are required to preserve the achievements of CARICOM’s 25 by 2025 initiative, which has already made significant progress on the path to reducing CARICOM’s food import bill by 25% in the lead up to 2025.

Heat-related setbacks impact both productivity and the price of food at home and for export.

Financing and solutions must be sensitive to the needs of climate vulnerable countries and must be focused more on adaptation, and not just mitigation.

This can be tricky given that the region’s economically vulnerable countries are forced to depend on the largest producers of greenhouse gases for adaptation finance. St. Kitts & Nevis, for example, has indicated that its financing needs for climate adaptation amount to some $127 million, while those of Guyana amount to $1.6 billion, and $2 billion for Trinidad & Tobago.

Other solutions come in the form of technical support. At the UN Climate Ambition Summit on September 22 ^nd 2023 in New York, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) announced a 6 year, $157 million partnership to establish Early Warning Systems in some of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries— among them, Antigua and Barbuda.

According to World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General , Professor Petteri Taalas, “Floods, fires, heatwaves, and drought have all wreaked devastation with people’s lives and livelihoods in recent weeks. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of these extreme events. It is therefore vital that climate adaptation policies and actions embrace multi-hazard Early Warning Systems to protect people and property.”

Advances in irrigation are also paramount to the future of the water intensive agriculture sector, particularly in the context of one of the most water stressed regions in the world.

In mid-September, Caribbean agriculture ministers and UN officials met in Jamaica for the High-level Ministerial Meeting for Caribbean Ministers of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to discuss regional priority project areas including advanced technological applications in irrigation.

“Jamaica has gone through one of its driest times ever; the reality is that it is also true for the rest of the region. The climate has changed, we are seeing different weather patterns; we are seeing higher temperatures, and the access to water has become more important than ever before in our history,” said Floyd Green, Jamaica’s Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, who chaired the meeting.

In relation to water shortages, St. Vincent, Agriculture Minister Saboto Cesar has advised that the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines through the Ministry of Agriculture has distributed water tanks and assisted scores of small farmers with water for livestock to cope with heat waves and droughts.

“Our Ministry will continue to create an enabling environment for our farmers to grapple with the vagaries of climate change; it will not be easy and strategic technological modifications to current agro-production systems will be central to our success.”

A variety of initiatives and solutions— many of which have been implemented with various degrees of success over the past two decades, have played an important role in building some degree of resilience.

“As the region continues to experience these high levels of unprecedented heat levels, it is important to employ climate resilience practices and climate smart agriculture techniques— with a strong emphasis on water management— so as to boost the region’s food security,” says Shaun Baugh, Programme Manager of Agricultural Development with the CARICOM Secretariat.

Climate smart agriculture and water management will surely be hot topics on the agenda of the upcoming 17th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in October 2023 and at the 38th Session of the Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean (LARC 38) in March 2024.

But beyond the conference halls and beneath superficial layers of academic discourse— at a purely grassroots level— many of the region’s farmers and fishers say that the scientific jargon lacks relatability.

“We have to rethink the way we do agriculture,” says Alpha Sennon. “Farmers have been getting the warnings about the climate changing but they haven’t been adapting to the changes… Climate smart agriculture practices were once something nice to talk about in theory, but now the changes have to be made in real life in order for us to survive.”

A US Air force engineer maintaining a nuclear-capable fighter-bomber at a forward base in the UK says he witnessed “something” scratching on the aircraft’s canopy. Airman James Stewart was based at RAF Woodbridge, site of the notorious Rendelsham Forest UFO incident.

But Stewart’s experience took place on Boxing Day 1979 – exactly one year before the sighting often described as “The UK’s Roswell Incident ”. He only came forward with his full account after a new book mistakenly claimed he had been present at the 1980 sighting.

Investigator Gary Heseltine spoke to Stewart, using enhanced interrogation techniques that he learned during his years in the police force. He explains that the so-called “Rendelsham Incident” was in fact a series of sightings over a number of days – with several “precursor” events taking place up to a year before.

READ MORE: USAF sergeant who saw UFO ‘received message from future pointing to bizarre location’

For more stories of the paranormal, strange and unexplained, check out the Daily Star’s Weird News section .

Initially, Gary had assumed that Stewart’s encounter was part of the well-reported Rendelsham sighting. But it was only when he actually spoke to the former aircraft engineer that he realised that there had been another “ alien ” incursion a year before.

“He was working outside middle of the night on his own repairing one of the last three F4 Phantom fighter jets that were on the base,” Gary explained to podcaster Chris Lehto .

“He’s working underneath it middle of the night, and there is the little step ladder going up to the cockpit … he feels a shudder as if something has just jumped or or standing or collided with the tail of the aircraft.”

As Stewart began to get up to investigate, there was an eerie sound: “He hears what is like a scratching on on glass – akin to a clawing sound. He’s thinking ‘What the hell is that?’ and he climbs up the little ladder to the cockpit and founds three scratches on the front cockpit of the aircraft …he knew that that was new damage.

“He then feels a second vibration, as if something has jumped from the tail of the aircraft down to the ground. He looks down the spine of the aircraft and he sees in the moisture and the dew of the night some footprint. He doesn’t recognise them but just some kind of footprint…”

The unseen intruder then hurried off into the darkness, towards nearby Rendelsham Forest. Stewart then says he heard gunshots, as if the airbase’s security guards had engaged a trespasser. Then, Stewart says, he saw a UFO slowly descending into the forest, as if to meet whoever or whatever had just run out of the base.

Stewart’s boss then turned up in a vehicle and whisked him away from the scene. “There’s no reason for this guy to make it up,” Gary said. “And it’s a sensational account”.

Gary’s researches into the main Rendelsham encounter, a full year later, suggest that US military personnel had professional video cameras set up in the forest to record the “alien landing”. Almost as if, he speculates, they knew something was going to happen.

“That gives that more credence to Larry Warren, who was the original military whistleblower,” Gary added. “He had always said that by the time he got involved in his event it was like they were expecting something to arrive because there were movie cameras there.”

He believes that somewhere, under lock and key, the US military is concealing hard evidence of visitors from another world – or possibly from another time – visiting a nuclear bomber station at during one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War.

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a ban on Tuesday on imports from three Chinese companies selling industrial chemicals, wool, and yarn on the grounds that they profited from Beijing’s state-sponsored slave trade of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Turkic ethnic groups.

The Chinese Communist Party, on direct orders of dictator Xi Jinping, has been waging a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and the other indigenous communities of occupied East Turkistan since at least 2017. The government has placed at least 3 million people in concentration camps, where they are believed to face indoctrination, unspeakable torture, and the horror of live organ harvesting. Among the many abuses the Chinese government subjects them to is slavery; “ batches ” of Uyghur slaves openly appear for sale to willing companies on the Chinese regime-controlled internet.

In response to the influx of slave-made products from China entering the U.S. marketplace, Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in 2021, which creates a rebuttable presumption that all imports from East Turkistan – which the Chinese government refers to by the colonial name “Xinjiang” – were made by slaves. Companies seeking to import products from East Turkistan must prove their products’ supply chains are not tainted by slavery to receive U.S. government permission to import them.

The Act went into effect in June 2022, despite widespread griping from implicated companies that complying with the law would be inconvenient.

RELATED: World Uyghur Congress’ Mahmut Slams Olympic Sponsors as “Putting Profit over Human Life”

Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart News

The UFPLA also created an “ entity list ” of companies banned from importing goods into America on the grounds of using Uyghur and other non-Han slaves to manufacture their products. Three new companies – Xinjiang Zhongtai Group Co. Ltd., Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Co. Ltd., and Xinjiang Tianmian Foundation Textile Co. – joined the list on Tuesday. Joining the list means the. companies’ goods “will be restricted from entering the United States as a result of the companies’ participation in business practices that target members of persecuted groups, including Uyghur minorities in the PRC.”

“Xinjiang Zhongtai Group Co. Ltd., is headquartered in Xinjiang and produces and sells polyvinyl chloride (PVC), iconic membrane caustic soda, industrial salt, calcium carbide, viscose fiber, viscose yarn, and other textile, chemical, and building materials,” DHS explained in a press release on Tuesday. “Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Co. Ltd. is headquartered in Xinjiang and sells and manufactures cashmere and wool garments, as well as velvet and other textile products.”

“Xinjiang Tianmian Foundation Textile Co. is headquartered in Xinjiang and produces yarn and textile products,” DHS added.

DHS described the blacklisting of the companies in question as part of a campaign to “eliminate the use of forced labor practices in the U.S. supply chain and promote accountability for the ongoing genocide.”

The three companies bring the total number of entities sanctioned under the UFLPA to 27. The goods trafficked by the companies vary widely – from cotton products to chemical compounds, from baby clothes to human hair. Among the most notorious of those on the UFLPA “entity list” is the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), accused for years of using cotton picked by Uyghur slaves. Prior to the passage of the UFLPA, in 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced it would seize any products attempting to enter the country originating from the XPCC on the grounds that the company used slave labor.

“CBP’s Office of Trade directed the issuance of a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against cotton products made by the XPCC based on information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor, including convict labor,” DHS explained at the time. “The WRO applies to all cotton and cotton products produced by the XPCC and its subordinate and affiliated entities as well as any products that are made in whole or in part with or derived from that cotton, such as apparel, garments, and textiles.”

Uyghurs protest in front of the White House to mark the anniversary of the Urumqi massacre by China on July 5, 2023. (AP)

Another corporation of note on the UFLPA entity list is Hetian Taida Apparel Co., LTD., whose slave-tainted products were freely available in American stores such as Costco as recently as 2019.

“Hetian Taida shipped 1.2 million items of baby pajamas and baby sleeper blankets with the destination of Costco, and Costco was going to sell it on their website,” China researcher and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Foundation Adrian Zenz told Congress in October of that year.

“It extremely disturbing that U.S. companies were still sourcing from the company,” Uyghur-American attorney and current commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Nury Turkel asserted during the same hearing, referring to Hetian Taida. “Two weeks ago, baby clothes produced by Hetian Taida were on the shelves at Costco. … It’s hard to understand how the goods got on the shelves in the first place.”

DHS noted in its press release on Tuesday that CBP has “reviewed more than 5,000 shipments valued at more than $1.74 billion under the UFLPA” since it went into effect in June 2022.

Experts have lamented that CBP is limited in how much it can act to prevent slave-made products from hitting American store shelves. Among the most concerning loopholes to shipment reviews is the exception for de minimis shipments, defined as those worth less than $800. This means that large numbers of shipments from companies in China selling retail products directly to Americans – such as online “fast fashion” companies Shein and Temu – face no scrutiny from CBP entering the country.

“Shein ships small packages direct-to-consumer using a trade loophole known as de minimis entry. Shein abuses this entry category to avoid customs duties and inspections on its unethically produced products,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) explained in a letter to colleagues in June. “Shein’s exploitation of de minimis entry prevents scrutiny under UFLPA, cheats taxpayers of customs revenue, and undercuts American competitors that play by the rules.”

The average Shein package is worth $11, far from the $800 upper limit that would trigger CBP inspections.

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