Indian authorities severed mobile internet access and text messaging for a second day Sunday across Punjab, a state of about 27 million people, as officials sought to capture a Sikh separatist and braced for potential unrest. The Washington Post reports: The statewide ban -- which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages -- marked one of the broadest shutdowns in recent years in India, a country that has increasingly deployed the law enforcement tactic, which digital rights activists call draconian and ineffective. The Punjab government, led by the opposition Aam Admi Party, initially announced a 24-hour ban starting midday Saturday as its security forces launched a sprawling operation to arrest the fugitive Amritpal Singh, then extended the ban Sunday for another 24 hours.

Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, has been a popular figure within a separatist movement that seeks to establish a sovereign state in Punjab called Khalistan for followers of the Sikh religion. He rocketed to nationwide notoriety in February after his supporters stormed a police station to free one of his jailed supporters. The Khalistan movement is outlawed in India and considered a top national security threat by officials, but the movement has sympathizers across Punjab state, which is majority Sikh, and among members of the large Sikh diaspora who have settled in countries such as Canada and Britain. In a bid to forestall unrest and curtail what it called "fake news," Punjab authorities blocked mobile internet service beginning at noon Saturday, shortly after they failed to apprehend Singh as he drove through central Punjab with a cavalcade of supporters. Officials were probably also motivated by a desire to deprive Singh's supporters of social media, which they briefly used Saturday to seek help and organize their ranks.

Singh was still on the run as of late Sunday, and the 4G blackout remained in effect. Three Punjab residents who spoke to The Washington Post said life had been disrupted since midday Saturday. Only essential text messages, such as confirmation codes for bank transfers, were trickling through. Wired internet services were not affected. "My entire business is dependent on internet," said Mohammad Ibrahim, who accepts QR code-based payments at his two clothing shops in a village outside of Ludhiana and also sells garments online. "Since yesterday, I've felt crippled."

Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Saturday that it would end availability of news content for Canadians on its platforms if the country's Online News Act passes in its current form. From a report: The "Online News Act," or House of Commons bill C-18, introduced in April last year laid out rules to force platforms like Meta and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. "A legislative framework that compels us to pay for links or content that we do not post, and which are not the reason the vast majority of people use our platforms, is neither sustainable nor workable," a Meta spokesperson said as reason to suspend news access in the country. Meta's move comes after Google last month started testing limited news censorship as a potential response to the bill. Canada's news media industry has asked the government for more regulation of tech companies to allow the industry to recoup financial losses it has suffered in the years as tech giants like Google and Meta steadily gain greater market share of advertising. We've watched this movie before.

Covid-19 may not have taken as great a toll on the mental health of most people as earlier research has indicated, a new study suggests. From a report: The pandemic resulted in "minimal" changes in mental health symptoms among the general population, according to a review of 137 studies from around the world led by researchers at McGill University in Canada, and published in the British Medical Journal. Brett Thombs, a psychiatry professor at McGill University and senior author, said some of the public narrative around the mental health impacts of Covid-19 were based on "poor-quality studies and anecdotes," which became "self-fulfilling prophecies," adding that there was a need for more "rigorous science."

However, some experts disputed this, warning such readings could obscure the impact on individual groups such as children, women and people with low incomes or pre-existing mental health problems. They also said other robust studies had reached different conclusions. Thombs said: "Mental health in Covid-19 is much more nuanced than people have made it out to be. Claims that the mental health of most people has deteriorated significantly during the pandemic have been based primarily on individual studies that are 'snapshots' of a particular situation, in a particular place, at a particular time. They typically don't involve any long-term comparison with what had existed before or came after."

schwit1 shares an excerpt from a Substack article, written by former cybersecurity reporter Catalin Cimpanu: The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the tax department of Canada, recently updated its terms and conditions to force taxpayers to agree that CRA is not liable if their personal information is stolen while using the My Account online service portal -- which, ironically, all Canadians must use when doing their taxes and/or running their business. The CRA's terms of use assert the agency is not liable because they have "taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site."

Excerpt from the CRA terms statement: "10. The Canada Revenue Agency has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site. We have used sophisticated encryption technology and incorporated other procedures to protect your personal information at all times. However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. In the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsible for any damages you may experience as a result."

Unfortunately, that is not true. After reviewing the HTTP responses from the CRA My Account login page, it's clear the agency has not configured even some of the most basic security features. For example, security protections for their cookies are not configured, nor are all the recommended security headers used. Not only is that not "all reasonable steps," but the CRA is missing the very basics for securing online web applications.

The terms of use also state that users are not allowed to use "any script, robot, spider, Web crawler, screen scraper, automated query program or other automated device or any manual process to monitor or copy the content contained in any online services." Looking at the HTTP response headers using web browser developer tools doesn't breach the terms of services, but the CRA must be well aware that internet users perform scans like this all the time. And it's not the legitimate My Account users who are likely to be the culprits. Unfortunately for Canadians, threat actors don't read terms of use pages. A statement like this doesn't protect anyone, except CRA, from being held responsible for failing to properly secure Canadian citizens' personal data.

"Meta is cutting prices for two of its virtual reality headsets as it continues trying to boost adoption for the nascent technology on which it has bet its future," reports CNN: The company announced Friday that it is slashing the price of its higher-end Meta Quest Pro headset by some $500, bringing its cost to $999, roughly six months after it was released. Meta is also lowering the price of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The price cut for the Quest 2 will go into effect in more than a dozen countries including the United States on Sunday. The Quest Pro price drop will take effect the same day in the United States and Canada and on March 15 in all other countries where it is sold.

"Our goal has always been to create hardware that's affordable for as many people as possible to take advantage of all that VR has to offer," the company said in a blog post.
Yahoo Finance believes Meta is lowering prices "because consumers are, well, just not buying as many as the company expected." The Verge agrees that the Meta Quest Pro was "an absolute boondoggle of a device" — but suggests that's not the whole story.

"if you look at the Quest 2, which most people use for playing games, as a game console, it's done reasonably well." Mark Rabkin, Meta's vice president for VR, told staff that Meta has sold over 20 million Quest headsets thus far. That includes both the Quest and Quest 2.... That seems like a small number, but the Nintendo GameCube only sold 21 million consoles in its entire lifespan, and the Xbox Series X and S are estimated to have sold approximately 20 million consoles thus far. So if you look at the Quest 2, which most people use for playing games, as a game console, it's done reasonably well.
Their conclusion? "Meta might have big ambitions for VR headsets and their place in the metaverse, but the reality is that the top software on the Quest 2 are all games.... And while Meta is thrusting metaverse experiences onto users, it's kind of ignoring that core gamer audience."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: At least two companies in British Columbia, Canada, say they've received exemptions from the federal government allowing them to produce and distribute cocaine, heroin, MDMA, or magic mushrooms. But it's not clear under what circumstances the companies will be able to sell the drugs, and B.C. Premier David Eby said he was "astonished" to hear the announcement. On Thursday, Sunshine Earth Labs, a psychedelics manufacturer announced that Health Canada, a federal government agency, is allowing the company to legally produce and distribute the coca leaf and cocaine; MDMA; opium; morphine, heroin and psilocybin, the active ingredient in shrooms. The company said it plans to "bring a safer supply of drugs to the global market."

Meanwhile, cannabis extractions company Adastra announced it's now legally allowed to both produce and distribute psilocybin and cocaine. In a statement to VICE News, Health Canada said Adastra is licensed to produce the drugs for scientific and medical purposes but cannot sell products to the general public. "They are only permitted for sale to other licence holders who have cocaine listed on their licence, pharmacists, practitioners, hospitals, or the holder of a section 56(1) exemption for research purposes," the agency said.

Both companies claim they received amendments under Health Canada's Dealer's Licenses, which grant manufacturers, doctors, and researchers exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, allowing them to legally possess and make banned drugs. In a news conference, Eby said the licenses were granted without consultation from the province. "It is not part of our provincial plan," he said, noting that he would be following up with Health Canada about the announcements. Adastra said it's license allows it to "interact with up to 250 grams of cocaine and to import coca leaves to manufacture and synthesize the substance."

Canada has announced it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting widening worries from Western officials over the Chinese-owned video sharing app. From a report: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it might be a first step to further action or that it might be it. "I suspect that as government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices," Trudeau said.

"I'm always a fan of giving Canadians the information for them to make the right decisions for them," he added. The European Union's executive branch said last week it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure. The EU's action follows similar moves in the U.S., where more than half of the states and Congress have banned TikTok from official government devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With Starlink speeds slowing due to a growing capacity crunch, SpaceX said a launch happening as soon as today will deploy the first "V2 Mini" satellites that provide four times more per-satellite capacity than earlier versions. Starlink's second-generation satellites include the V2 Minis and the larger V2. The larger V2s are designed for the SpaceX Starship, which isn't quite ready to launch yet, but the V2 Minis are slimmed-down versions that can be deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket. "The V2 Minis are smaller than the V2 satellites (hence the name) but don't let the name fool you," SpaceX said in a statement provided to Ars yesterday. "The V2 Minis include more advanced phased array antennas and the use of E-band for backhaul, which will enable Starlink to provide ~4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations."

SpaceX didn't specify the amount of data that each V2 Mini satellite can provide, but its first-generation satellites were designed for an aggregate downlink capacity of 17 to 23Gbps per satellite. The Federal Communications Commission recently gave SpaceX approval to launch 7,500 of the 30,000 planned second-generation satellites. A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch tentatively scheduled for today would put 21 V2 Minis into orbit. The larger V2 satellites that can't launch until Starship is ready will be able to send signals directly to cell phones, a capability that'll be used by SpaceX and T-Mobile in a partnership announced in August 2022. "Each Starlink V2 Mini satellite weighs about 1,760 pounds (800 kilograms) at launch, nearly three times heavier than the older Starlink satellites," notes Spaceflight Now. "They are also bigger in size, with a spacecraft body more than 13 feet (4.1 meters) wide, filling more of the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing during launch."

UPDATE: SpaceX successfully launched the first batch of "V2 Mini" Starlink satellites. "A Falcon 9 rocket hauled the 21 Starlink satellites into a 230-mile-high (370-kilometer) orbit after lifting off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:13:50 p.m. EST (2313:50 GMT) Monday," reports Spaceflight Now. "SpaceX delayed the launch from earlier Monday afternoon to wait for radiation levels to abate following a solar storm that sparked dramatic auroral displays visible across Northern Europe and Canada." You can watch the launch here. Elon Musk also shared video of the first V2 satellites to reach orbit.

Three long-time Slashdot readers all submitted this story — schwit1, sinij, and DevNull127.

DevNull127 writes: Four U.S. agencies have concluded that the Covid-19 virus originated at the Wuhan market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. National Intelligence Council reached the same conclusion. Then there's two more agencies (including America's CIA) that are "undecided."

But there is one agency that decided — with "low confidence" — that the virus had somehow leaked from a lab. (And the FBI also decided with "moderate confidence" on that same theory.) "The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin," writes the Wall Street Journal — adding that unfortunately U.S. officials "declined" to give any details on what led to the Energy Department's position.
The Wall Street Journal also notes: Despite the agencies' differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus between them that Covid-19 wasn't the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program, the people who have read the classified report said....

Some scientists argue that the virus probably emerged naturally and leapt from an animal to a human, the same pathway for outbreaks of previously unknown pathogens. Intelligence analysts who have supported that view give weight to "the precedent of past novel infectious disease outbreaks having zoonotic origins," the flourishing trade in a diverse set of animals that are susceptible to such infections, and their conclusion that Chinese officials didn't have foreknowledge of the virus, the 2021 report said.
Also responding to the Department of Energy's outlying position was a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at Canada's University of Saskatchewan, who posted a series of observations on Twitter: The available evidence shows overwhelmingly that the pandemic started at Huanan market via zoonosis. I have no idea what this evidence that Department of Energy has is. All I know that it is "weak" and resulted in a conclusion of "low confidence".

It reportedly comes from the DOE's own network of national labs rather than through spying. But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....

Claims of a progenitor at WIV are pure speculation & unsupported by evidence.... Despite 3 years of a global search for this evidence, it has not materialized, while evidence supporting zoonosis associated with Huanan has continued to stack up. At some point, an absence of evidence might just be evidence of absence.

Canada's second-largest telecom, TELUS is investigating a potential data breach after a threat actor shared samples online of what appears to be employee data. BleepingComputer reports: The threat actor subsequently posted screenshots that apparently show private source code repositories and payroll records held by the company. TELUS has so far not found evidence of corporate or retail customer data being stolen and continues to monitor the potential incident. On February 17, a threat actor put up what they claim to be TELUS' employee list (comprising names and email addresses) for sale on a data breach forum. "TELUS employes [sic] from a very recent breach. We have over 76K unique emails and on top of this, we have internal information associated with each employee scraped from Telus' API," states the forum post.

While BleepingComputer has been unable to confirm the veracity of threat actor's claims just yet, the small sample set posted by the seller does have valid names and email addresses corresponding to present-day TELUS employees, particularly software developers and technical staff. By Tuesday, February 21, the same threat actor had created another forum post -- this time offering to sell TELUS' private GitHub repositories, source code, as well as the company's payroll records. The seller further boasts that the stolen source code contains the company's "sim-swap-api" that will purportedly enable adversaries to carry out SIM swap attacks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC: Google is blocking some Canadian users from viewing news content in what the company says is a test run of a potential response to the Liberal government's online news bill. Also known as Bill C-18, the Online News Act would require digital giants such as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, to negotiate deals that would compensate Canadian media companies for republishing their content on their platforms. The company said Wednesday that it is temporarily limiting access to news content for under four per cent of its Canadian users as it assesses possible responses to the bill. The change applies to its ubiquitous search engine as well as the Discover feature on Android devices, which carries news and sports stories. All types of news content are being affected by the test, which will run for about five weeks, the company said. That includes content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers.

In a news release, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) said Google's tactics just reinforce why Bill C-18 is so "vital," adding that Google and other global digital giants are showing they do not intend to play fair. "These are bully tactics, and Google is trying to push the Senate to back down on Bill C-18. We hope senators will see these actions for what they are," said CAB president Kevin Desjardins. "Bill C-18 was introduced to set up fair negotiations between news organizations and these global digital giants on the value of their news content. Google has shown they're willing to block Canadians' vital access to legitimate news content to maintain their dominance in the advertising field." Meta threatened to stop the sharing of news links in Canada last year if C-18 passed as currently written.

The social media company temporarily shut down news feeds in Australia after a similar law was introduced. It took effect in March 2021 and has largely worked, according to a government report.

CBC notes: "More than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008, including 64 in the last two years."

Polygon Labs, the Ethereum scaling platform, has cut around 100 jobs or 20% of its workforce, the firm said on Tuesday. The job cuts come at a time when the crypto industry is reeling from the impact of the FTX implosion and subsequent downturn. From a report: "Earlier this year, we consolidated multiple business units under Polygon Labs. As part of this process, we're sharing the difficult news that we've reduced our team by 20% impacting multiple teams and about 100 positions," the company said in a release. The cuts affect employees mostly in the U.S. Canada and India where most of Polygon's workforce is located, a company spokesperson told CoinDesk. "Momentarily, your access to Polygon Labs' systems, including Slack and email will end; the abrupt nature is a necessary security measure," read an email to a laid off employee viewed by CoinDesk.

"Astronomers spotted an unexpected trail in the gas surrounding a dwarf galaxy while using the Hubble Space Telescope...." writes Hot Hardware. "The light emitting from the trail traveled more than 7.5 billion years to reach Earth and is thought to be traveling at a breakneck speed of 1,600km/s (3.5 million mph).

Science Alert says it could be "the smoking gun pointing to a runaway supermassive black hole."

More from Universe Today: Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large galaxies like ours. From their commanding position in the galaxy's heart, they feed on gas, dust, stars, and anything else that strays too close, growing more massive as time passes. But in rare circumstances, an SMBH can be forced out of its position and hurtle through space as a rogue SMBH.

In a new paper, researchers from Canada, Australia, and the USA present evidence of a rogue SMBH that's tearing through space and interacting with the circumgalactic medium (CGM.) Along the way, the giant is creating shock waves and triggering star formation.... The paper hasn't been peer-reviewed yet....

In their paper, the authors explain how an SMBH can be cast out of its host galaxy. It always starts when galaxies merge. That leads to the formation of a binary SMBH at the center of the merger remnant. The binary SMBH can be very long-lived, surviving for as long as one billion years before merging. If during that time, a third SMBH reaches the galactic center, then a three-body interaction can give one of the SMBHs a velocity boost, and it can be driven from the galaxy.
Hot Hardware adds that "This is not the first time a supermassive black hole has been found ejected from the center of its host galaxy. However, this is the first time one has been detected speeding across intergalactic space and believed to be inactive."

And RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) explains that "After the collision and ejection from the galaxy core, the passage of the black hole through the galaxy and it's surrounding material produced a burst of star formation along that line, which we now see as a faint linear streak of light....

"Those who like doom-laden prophecies will be upset to hear that, because we can see this moving across the plane of the sky, it is never going to come any where near us."

New submitter kalieaire writes: Steve Trimble of Aviation week reports that a Hobby Club's missing ballon might have been inadvertently targeted as a malicious UFO and subsequently shot down. When Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS) company founder, Ron Meadows, reached out to Gov't resources at the FBI and DoD, they were brushed off. "I'm guessing probably they were pico balloons," said Tom Medlin, a retired FedEx engineer and co-host of the Amateur Radio Roundtable show. Merlin has three pico balloons in flight in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. According to Trimble, the description of all three UFOs shot down during 2/10-12 match the description of pico balloon models which can be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type. "Launching high-altitude, circumnavigational pico balloons has emerged only within the past decade," writes Trimble. He continues: Meadows and his son Lee discovered it was possible to calculate the amount of helium gas necessary to make a common latex balloon neutrally buoyant at altitudes above 43,000 ft. The balloons carry an 11-gram tracker on a tether, along with HF and VHF/UHF antennas to update their positions to ham radio receivers around the world. At any given moment, several dozen such balloons are aloft, with some circling the globe several times before they malfunction or fail for other reasons. The launch teams seldom recover their balloons.

The balloons can come in several forms. Some enthusiasts still use common, Mylar party balloons, with a set of published calculations to determine the amount of gas to inject. But the round-shaped Mylar balloons often are unable to ascend higher than 20,000-30,000 ft., so some pico balloonists have upgraded to different materials. [...] In fact, the pico balloons weigh less than 6 lb. and therefore are exempt from most FAA airspace restrictions, Meadows and Medlin said. Three countries -- North Korea, Yemen and the UK -- restrict transmissions from balloons in their airspace, so the community has integrated geofencing software into the tracking devices. The balloons still overfly the countries, but do not transmit their positions over their airspace. On Feb. 15, NSC spokesman John Kirby told reporters all three objects "could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose," but he did not mention the possibility of pico balloons.

Bruce66423 shares a report from Nature: The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned. Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn't going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. "Their hands are really tied." [...]

"There is no phase two," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but "that plan has changed." "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins," she said. Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus's initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020. But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated. "The ending of the investigation is not a surprise," adds Bruce66423. "But why 'quietly'?"

The U.S. military shot down another high-altitude object Sunday, reports CNN — this one flying near Michigan.

"The operation marks the third day in a row that an unidentified object was shot down over North American airspace." Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Sunday that the operation to down the object over Lake Huron was carried out by pilots from the U.S. Air Force and the National Guard.... The object was flying at 20,000 feet over Michigan's Upper Peninsula and was about to go over Lake Huron when it was neutralized, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.

The object was "octagonal" with strings hanging off and no discernable payload, according to the official and another source briefed on the matter. While the U.S. has no indication that the object had surveillance capabilities, that has not been ruled out yet.
Why have so many flying objects been spotted in the last week? The Washington Post says the Chinese spy balloon and subsequently-spotted objects "have changed how analysts receive and interpret information from radars and sensors, a U.S. official said Saturday." The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that sensory equipment absorbs a lot of raw data, and filters are used so humans and machines can make sense of what is collected. But that process always runs the risk of leaving out something important, the official said.

"We basically opened the filters," the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched. That change does not yet fully answer what is going on, the official cautioned, and whether stepping back to look at more data is yielding more hits — or if these latest incursions are part of a more deliberate action by an unknown country or adversary....

The official said the current U.S. assessment is the objects are not military threats.

Oceans naturally recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a massive scale, reports NBC News. So a Canadian startup named Planetary Technologies is "attempting to harness and accelerate that potential by adding antacid powder to the ocean." The theory goes that by altering seawater chemistry, the ocean's surface could absorb far more atmospheric carbon than it does naturally. The company is developing an approach that would turn the waste products from shuttered mines into an alkaline powder. They would deliver it into the water via existing pipes from wastewater treatment or energy plants to avoid having to build new infrastructure....

Planetary intends to recycle mine waste from a defunct asbestos mine in Quebec to produce pure magnesium hydroxide, which the company believes would help accelerate the ocean's carbon uptake ability in the areas where it's used. The strategy is inspired by the natural process of chemical rock weathering, where rain — which is slightly acidic — "weathers" or erodes the surface of rocks and minerals, and then transfers that alkalinity to the ocean via runoff.... [T]he company intends to start running small-scale ocean pilots — adding their antacid and measuring the change in carbon absorption — in Canada and the U.K. later this year.
But it's just one of "a growing number of strategies" to "leverage" the ocean in fighting climate change: In 2021, the National Academies of Science published a landmark report advocating further research into ocean-based carbon removal methods, in light of the growing scientific consensus that reducing emissions alone will not be enough to stave off the devastating effects of climate change. The report highlighted everything from large-scale seaweed farming to shooting lasers to electrochemically change the water's chemistry, while acknowledging that research on the viability and potential trade-offs of these strategies is nascent at best.....

One startup intends to spread ground minerals over beaches in Long Island and the Caribbean, in the hope that they will gradually wash away and alkalinize the beaches there. Another method that's gained traction involves using underwater pipes to pump up nutrient rich water from the ocean's depths to promote phytoplankton growth on the surface.

CNN reports: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that an "unidentified object" had been shot down by a U.S. fighter jet over Canadian airspace on his orders.... "Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object," Trudeau said on Twitter....

A statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the object shot down on Saturday was first noticed over Alaska on Friday evening. Two F-22 fighter jets "monitored the object" with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard, Ryder's statement said, "tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object."

"Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object. A U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile," his statement added....

It is not clear what the object is or whether it is related to the spy balloon shot down last week or the unidentified object shot down over Alaska on Friday.
"Saturday's incident follows the downing of another unidentified object on Friday over Alaska, and the shoot-down of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4 by a US F-22 fighter jet."

Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. From a report: The company had already started testing the change -- in a few different forms -- in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in "the coming months." Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household popped up on support pages for the US and other countries where the new "paid sharing" setup hasn't rolled out yet.

Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren't on your home network. No matter what country you select, it only says, "A Netflix account is meant to be shared in one household (people who live in the same location as the account owner). People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch Netflix."

EverWind Fuels has become the first green hydrogen producer in North America to secure the necessary permits for a commercial-scale facility on Tuesday. Reuters reports: Provincial authorities in Canada granted environmental approval for EverWind to begin converting a former oil storage facility and marine terminal at Point Tupper in Nova Scotia into a green hydrogen and ammonia production hub. [...] EverWind expects the project's first phase, producing and exporting 200,000 tonnes per annum, to be online in 2025, before ramping up to 1 million tonnes per annum the following year. The company has agreements with German energy firms E.ON and Uniper to acquire the production. "To get the permit is a big deal," said Vichie, who co-founded Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners and also worked at Blackstone. The green hydrogen produced by EverWind's facility will be combined with nitrogen and converted into ammonia before being shipped, in liquid form, in tankers to Germany, where it can be retained as ammonia or turned back into green hydrogen.

Production during the facility's first phase will be powered using wind and solar assets to be built nearby, Vichie said. The company in December leased 137,000 acres (55,440 hectares) which will eventually site turbines generating 2 gigawatts of wind energy, that will power production in its second, larger phase. "This provides an amazing green growth path for Atlantic Canada, where they have some of the world's best wind resources," Vichie said. The overall cost of the project is expected to be around $6 billion. Three banks are helping arrange debt funding, while Vichie's family office is providing equity capital, he said. In other hydrogen-related news, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Universal Hydrogen approval to fly its 40+ passenger hydrogen electric plane.