Important Takeaways:
- United States and Canadian fighter jets intercepted four Russian and Chinese bombers that were flying in international airspace near Alaska on Wednesday, officials said.
- Wednesday’s joint Russian and Chinese flight was…notable for being the first intercept of Chinese military aircraft near Alaska
- The joint Russian and Chinese flight reflects the growing military ties between the two nations.
- NORAD stressed that the flight “is not seen as a threat” and that it will continue to monitor activity near North America “and meet presence with presence.”
- “We’re keeping a watchful eye on how they’re developing their capacity for operating in the region,” Iris Ferguson, deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience, told reporters Monday.
- “As we say in the department, you know, they are our long-term pacing challenge. And I think that includes in the Arctic.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Major fault line off West Coast could trigger catastrophic 9-magnitude earthquake, study finds – and it’s due to blow
- An underwater fault line along the US West Coast could trigger a mega quake that would be more devastating than California’s ‘Big One,’ a new study suggests.
- Using underwater mapping techniques, scientists have mapped the Cascadia Subduction Zone – a 600-mile fault line extending from southern Canada to northern California – in never-before-seen detail.
- It has revealed that the fault splits into four segments instead of being one continuous strip like most fault lines. The discovery could prove more catastrophic because the tectonic plates can slide under each other, creating more pressure and more severe earthquakes.
- California’s San Andreas is poised for an up to 8.3-magnitude quake, for comparison.
- If an earthquake of over 9 magnitude struck the West Coast US it could generate tsunamis reaching 100 feet high or more, kill more than 10,000 people and cause over $80 billion in damages in just Oregon and Washington alone.
- Disaster emergency plans in Oregon and Washington warn that in the aftermath of a quake that big, they could face a wave of long-term deaths due to disease from exposure to dead bodies, animal carcasses, contaminated water and Hazmat spills from commercial, industrial and household sources.
- A similar fault zone off the coast of Japan erupted in 2011, creating a magnitude 9 quake that caused a devastating tsunami to strike the country, killing nearly 20,000 people.
- Now scientists are worried that a similar calamity could impact the US in the coming years, reporting that quakes caused by Cascadia occur roughly every 500 years, with the last one taking place in 1700.
- ‘The recurrent interval for this subduction zone for big events is on the order of 500 years,’ Wang said.
- ‘It’s hard to know exactly when it will happen, but certainly, if you compare this to other subduction zones, it is quite late.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Canada’s wildfire season re-erupts forcing thousands from homes, prompting air quality alerts
- An evacuation alert was issued for Fort McMurray in Alberta as crews responded to what they described as an “out-of-control wildfire” southwest of town that had burned more than 13,500 acres as of Sunday.
- The combination of warm temperatures and an ongoing drought have helped fuel several fires in western Canada, which has triggered thousands to leave their homes.
- One of the largest fires burning in the province of British Columbia is called the Parker Lake Wildfire. As of Sunday, the blaze had burned more than 6,100 acres, and firefighters said it was continuing to show extreme behavior due to dry brush and winds.
- Conditions in many parts of B.C., and especially in the Prince George Fire Centre (PGFC), are unseasonably dry and more typical of those observed in the late summer. As a result, fuels are more susceptible to ignition and wildfires can spread more quickly,” the British Columbia Wildfire Service said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended more migrants crossing the Canadian Border into the U.S. this year than in the past twelve years combined, according to the sector chief patrol agent.
- Unofficial Border Patrol reports reveal that Swanton Sector agents apprehended more than 4,000 migrants during the first five months of FY24, which began on October 1, 2023. This is up by more than 100 percent from the same period in record-shattering FY23.
- “It was a flood we had never seen before. It was an exponential shift, something we were not expecting and it just hit us hard,”
- “The people here that we’re seeing for the most part, they’re trying to find that vulnerability and come into the United States without detection.”
- “Border Patrol said they have arrested individuals from 66 different countries, including India, Bangladesh, Haiti, and Venezuela,”
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Important Takeaways:
- The northern invasion: New York, New Hampshire and Vermont see highest EVER border crossings as migrants take advantage of lax laws to get into Canada
- New York, Vermont and New Hampshire counties have seen a record number of illegal border crossings in recent months, startling statistics show.
- The new numbers, up more than twofold from 2022, come as an increasing number of migrants elect to travel through Canada rather than Mexico to avoid detection, creating a new spin on the now years-long crisis.
- While most still use legal ports of entry, more than 12,200 were apprehended crossing illegally from the north in 2023 – much more than the 3,578 arrested the year prior.
- Experts have attributed this phenomenon to Canada’s lax laws, like not requiring travelers from Mexico to have a visa to enter the country.
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Important Takeaways:
- China’s ‘CEO Whisperers’: Chinese Communist Party Takes Over Canada
- “When I look… at the subtle but intense influence of China on Canadian institutions — parliaments, provincial governments, local governments, universities, the intellectual community, the policy community — it makes me deadly worried,” said Australian professor Clive Hamilton, author of Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (co-authored by Mareike Ohlberg), speaking to Canada’s National Post in 2019. “I’ve met some very well-informed Canadians who aren’t sure Canada will be able to extricate itself from this situation.”
- Hamilton, who “blew the whistle on Australia says Canada is in even worse trouble.”
- “I was pretty dismayed at the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the federal Parliament. I should probably not say any more to stay on the right side of the libel laws… My response is to ask what are the authorities doing about this…? I think that’s the real measure of China’s influence.”
- Despite leaked intelligence reports about Chinese interference in Canada’s last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to hold a public probe into the matter.
- “The CCP’s basic strategy of overseas influence and interference is to capture elites in politics, business, media, think tanks, universities, and cultural institutions…It deploys a range of techniques including flattery, financial inducement, exploitation of anti-racist and anti-American sentiment, bribery, and honey traps… Key figures in the Liberal Party have long historical ties to the CCP, not least through business connections…” — Clive Hamilton, thehub.ca, June 2, 2023.
- China has reportedly openly been trying to influence [Canadian PM] Justin Trudeau for the past ten years. One unnamed CSIS source said that the CCP had its eyes on Justin Trudeau well before he became prime minister.
- .. is a real threat to Canada’s sovereignty. “Recent Chinese actions and announcements are pointing to Beijing’s determination to have a military capability in the region that will exceed that of Canada.” — Rob Hueber, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary, Globe and Mail, August 25, 2023.
- “What has not received as much attention is a research paper, published in 2021, in which Chinese scientists explain their success in developing Arctic-resilient underwater listening systems. The paper says the listening systems are for peaceful purposes, but the actual ramifications of the HABs, buoys and research systems are inescapable. China is refining its means of monitoring the Canadian North…
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Important Takeaways:
- Hurricane Lee live updates: Millions in New England under storm warnings as landfall looms
- Millions of residents across eastern New England and parts of Canada were under tropical storm warnings on Friday as Hurricane Lee moved faster toward the region as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- “The worst conditions on Cape Cod will occur late Friday night and Saturday as Lee tracks more than 100 miles to the east Saturday morning,” AccuWeather hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski said.
- Then, on Saturday, “hurricane conditions and coastal flooding are possible in portions of eastern Maine, southern New Brunswick, and western Nova Scotia,” the National Hurricane Center said.
- Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday declared a state of emergency as the state was under its first hurricane watch in 15 years Thursday afternoon. Earlier in the week, the region saw 10 inches of rain over six hours.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hurricane Lee is expected to be a large and damaging storm when it reaches far eastern New England and Canada this weekend.
- Hurricane Lee is an unusually large storm and growing further, with hurricane-force winds extending out to 105 miles from the center, and tropical storm-force winds reaching a radius of 290 miles
- Eastern Maine is likely to see the strongest winds, largest waves and heaviest rains.
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Important Takeaways:
- The indiscriminate devastation of Canada’s raging wildfires
- There have been more than 1,000 wildfires across Canada in the last week – a record number.
- The biggest fires may have been tamed, but there is still a significant threat as new seats of fire start up at various places in the tinder-dry forest.
- The helicopters flew and dropped water virtually from dawn till dusk and were back again the next day.
- This crisis has undoubtedly strengthened the bond between the fire crews and a grateful public, who gather at fire houses in Kelowna to cheer home the firemen and firewomen after another exhausting day in the forest.
- “There were times when our staff were surrounded on all sides by fire,” says the chief. “They would not say they were ‘trapped’ but there’s no question it’s been dangerous. We saw dramatic fire behavior, with winds ripping up trees by their roots and laying them down like toothpicks.”
- Most alarmingly, Chief Brolund wonders about how his relatively small department can cope with an ever-expanding fire season. Normally the team would be dealing with a relatively small number of blazes in July and August. Now, he says, they can be fighting wildfires from March to November.
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Important Takeaways:
- More than 20,000 Canadians have been ordered to flee their homes amid ‘out of control’ wildfires that now threaten to cut off access to the only highway out of the affected city.
- Thousands evacuated Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, on Thursday as wildfires burned across the region, forcing convoys of vehicles to snake south to safety on the only open highway.
- Evacuation flights also took off from the local airport in the latest chapter in a terrible summer for wildfires in Canada – the worst fire season on record. Residents of the regional capital have been given until noon Friday to leave.
- Northwest winds over the next two days will send the fire ‘in directions we don’t want,’ said Mike Westwick, Northwest Territories’ fire information officer.
- Across the wider territory, 6,800 people in eight other communities were also forced to evacuate their homes, including the small community of Enterprise, which was largely destroyed
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