Category: Travel

SpaceX is expanding the beta test of its Starlink satellite internet service, reaching out via email on Monday to people who expressed interest in signing up for the service.Called the “Better Than Nothing Beta” test, according to multiple screenshots of the email seen by CNBC, initial Starlink service is priced at $99 a month – plus a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit.That kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a wifi router

Source: SpaceX Starlink service priced at $99 a month, public beta test begins

International shipping companies are on track to get a free pass on their greenhouse gas emissions for the rest of this decade under what’s being called a “compromise” proposal that postpones energy efficiency requirement for marine vessels until 2030.The plan, adopted by Japan, China, South Korea, Norway, and several EU member states, imposes “a combination of mandatory short-term technical and operational measures on the world’s 60,000 vessels, from reducing engine power to introducing ship-level carbon intensity targets,” Climate Home News reports. But “these measures would not be enforced until 2030—a decade too late, green groups say.”

Source: New Carbon Regulations Give International Shipping a Free Pass Until 2030 – The Energy Mix

Scientists say they are racing against time to name and describe new plants, before species go extinct.Plants and fungi hold promise as future medicines, fuels and foods, according to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.But opportunities are being lost to use this “treasure chest of incredible diversity” as species vanish due to habitat destruction and climate change.New estimates suggest two-fifths of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction.The assessment of the State of the World’s Plants and Fungi is based on research from more than 200 scientists in 42 countries.The report was released on the day of a United Nations summit, which will press for action from world leaders to address biodiversity loss.Plant extinction ‘bad news for all species’A third of tropical African plants face extinctionSeeds hold hidden treasures for future food

Source: Two-fifths of plants at risk of extinction, says report – BBC News

While many provincial ridings are working to secure their nomination for the Oct. 24 election the BC Liberals named their candidate, Roxanne Helme, in late June.Helme is a career lawyer who has sat on local, national and international councils. Having been declared early she’s among the more prepared BC Liberal candidates but shares the party’s disappointment in the snap election.“I’m interested in good governance and not politics, and it’s politics which has taken us into this election and at an undesirable time,” Helme said Monday. “I was looking at another year [until the election], so I’m happy enough to get on with it personally. But my neighbours are not happy with it. We had a stable government and this is just politics.”The Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding will have a new MLA as incumbent Andrew Weaver will not run again.Helme actually graduated from Oak Bay High in the same class as Weaver in 1980.

Source: Meet the Liberal candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head – Victoria News

Quibi, the beleaguered short-form content company started by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, announced on Wednesday that it was shutting down just six months after the app became available. The mobile streaming service offered entertainment and news programs in five- to 10-minute chunks intended to be watched on phones by people on the go, but it struggled to find an audience with everyone stuck inside their homes during the pandemic.Despite raising a combined $1.75 billion in cash from each of the Hollywood studios, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and other investors, Quibi will wind down its operations and begin selling off its assets. It had searched for a buyer for the company but found no takers.

Source: Quibi, Short-Form Streaming Service, Quickly Shuts Down – The New York Times

With British Columbia five days away from a provincial election October 24, and mail-in voting already well under way, Premier John Horgan’s New Democrats are taking fire for doubling down on the subsidies the previous Liberal government had extended to the province’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry.“Right now, B.C. hands over a billion tax dollars a year to the oil and gas industry—that’s twice as much as we spend fighting climate change, and five times as much as we get back in royalties,” Dogwood B.C. states, in a sign-on asking supporters to contact their MLAs about fossil subsidies. “We’re paying rich companies to pollute, we’re getting ripped off in the process, and it’s got to stop.”

Source: Horgan Takes Fire for Boosting Fossil Subsidies as B.C. Election Nears [Sign-On] – The Energy Mix

MONDAY, Oct. 19, 2020 — A coronavirus strain that has plagued the swine industry in recent years may have the ability to spread to people, researchers say.Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) has infected swine herds throughout China since its discovery in 2016, according to a new report.In lab tests, scientists at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill showed that SADS-CoV can replicate in human liver, gut and airway cells.While in the same family as the betacoronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 in people, SADS-CoV is an alphacoronavirus that causes gastrointestinal illness (severe diarrhea and vomiting) in swine. It’s especially deadly to young piglets.SADS-CoV is also distinct from two common cold alphacoronaviruses in humans, HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63, the study authors explained.

Source: Swine Coronavirus Could Jump to People, Researchers Warn – Drugs.com MedNews

WHEN YON SHIMIZU HEARD THE news that Japanese forces had bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was on his hands and knees, scrubbing his family’s linoleum floor. Living in a rented house in Victoria, British Columbia, with his sister, two brothers, and their widowed mother, he was listening to the radio while completing his chores. He raced from the room to tell the rest of his family. “I was frightened and dismayed,” he recounts in the prologue to his book, The Exiles. Life had never been easy for his family, he adds, “but none of us were really prepared for the devastating events which were to unfold in the coming months.”In 1942, the Canadian government declared a “protected area” along the Pacific Coast—a buffer zone between the water and the Japanese-Canadian communities that had flanked it. Under pressure from officials such as Ian Mckenzie, a cabinet minister from British Columbia, elected officials at federal, provincial, and local levels insisted that the Japanese Canadians who lived there be forcibly relocated. Nearly 22,000 people—roughly 90 percent of the Japanese Canadian population at the time—were uprooted.

Source: How Japanese Canadians Survived Internment and Dispossession – Atlas Obscura

Have you ever dreamt of racing on a magnificent sailing superyacht that looks like a classic vessel from the 1920s and ’30s? During that golden era of sailing, J Class titans like Shamrock V, Yankee, Ranger, and Endeavour II became royalty of the sailing world. Those massive, powerful vessels, with their sleek wooden hulls and billowing sails, along with dozens of crew hanging over the gunwales, became icons for the world’s wealthiest families.A century later, Rainbow exudes the same sense of grace and power, but is a thoroughly modern recreation of its 1930s namesake. Launched in 2012 by Holland Jachtbouw, she faintly resembles the 1934 J Class America’s Cup winner. Because she mixes classic design with modern technology, this new-generation Rainbow packs more pedigree into her 140-foot aluminum hull than most other modern sailing yachts combined.

Source: This 140-Foot Sailing Yacht Combines 1930s Design With Modern Tech – Robb Report

Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Chilliwack and Phil Ochs volunteered and 10,000 people showed up at the Coliseum, paying $3 a ticket. The net profit was $17,164, which basically launched Greenpeace, the world’s foremost environmental organization.The concert was dreamed up by Irving Stowe, a 55-year-old lawyer who had become a full-time peace and environmental activist.“Brothers and sisters in green peace,” he announced at the show. “Green peace is beautiful! And you are beautiful, because you are here tonight! You came here because you are not on a death trip! You believe in life, you believe in peace, and you want them now!”

Source: Fifty years ago, a Vancouver benefit concert launched Greenpeace | Vancouver Sun