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Canada blames India, FEMA faces threats and NASA goes sea-hunting

 
Today's InterNATIOnAL story

Canada and India expel top diplomats in growing rift 

What happened
Canada said yesterday it expelled six Indian diplomats, including its ambassador, after uncovering clear evidence they were involved in the 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and a broader Indian plot to coerce, extort and murder Indian Canadian critics. India denied the allegations and expelled Canada's acting ambassador and five other diplomats in return.

Who said what
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a televised address yesterday that Canada's national police now had "clear and compelling evidence" that Indian government agents were engaged in "activities that pose a significant threat to public safety." Canada "will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil," he said. "India has made a monumental mistake." Trudeau's linking of India to Nijjar's murder last year had caused a "rift" that's now a "major rupture," Fen Osler Hampson, an international relations professor at Ottawa's Carleton University, told Reuters.

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada had shown India the "ample, clear and concrete evidence" for the six diplomats being "persons of interest" in the Nijjar killing, and it expelled them only after India refused to lift their diplomatic immunity so they could be questioned. India's foreign ministry said Delhi "strongly rejects" Canada's "preposterous imputations and ascribes them" to Trudeau's "political agenda."

India's spy agencies have "long been accused of directing the killings of opponents inside neighboring countries," The New York Times said, and Canada's accusations about the Nijjar assassination were "bolstered by the findings of an American investigation into a similar, though unsuccessful, plot against a U.S.-based Sikh cleric," Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, last November.

What next?
The U.S. State Department said an Indian government committee investigating Delhi's alleged involvement in the Pannun assassination plot will arrive in Washington today as part of its ongoing inquiry. Joly pointedly "noted that India is cooperating with U.S. officials and can do it with Canada as well," The Associated Press said.

 
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Today's NATIONAl story

Man arrested as threats on FEMA hinder Helene relief

What happened
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday it had temporarily suspended some operations in western North Carolina over the weekend, including door-to-door visits, as it assessed threats against disaster workers. An armed man was arrested Saturday after he allegedly threatened to harm FEMA workers in areas hit hard by Hurricane Helene, the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office said yesterday.

Who said what
William Jacob Parsons, 44, was arrested outside a grocery store functioning as a relief center on misdemeanor charges of "going armed to the terror of the public," and released on a $10,000 bond, the sheriff's office said. Despite earlier reports, authorities determined that "Parsons acted alone and there was no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure."

National Guard troops in the area had come across "trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA," a Forest Service official assisting in Helene recovery work had warned FEMA, The Washington Post said. FEMA reportedly resumed normal operations yesterday.

"We know that significant misinformation online contributes to threats against response workers on the ground," North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said yesterday. Some people "in need of assistance who are entitled to assistance" are not "seeking it because of the false information," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday on "Face the Nation."

What next?
The rampant false information about FEMA's response, spread largely by Donald Trump and his allies, has prompted the Biden administration to "ramp up social media posts from government accounts with photos illustrating how federal workers are clearing debris and dispensing aid," CNN said.

 
 
Today's SPACE Story

NASA's Europa Clipper blasts off, seeking an ocean

What happened
Europa Clipper, the largest extraplanetary spacecraft ever built by NASA, took off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center yesterday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, headed toward Jupiter. The spacecraft, the size of a basketball court with its solar wings unfurled, carries an array of nice specialized instruments to study the ocean believed to be buried 10 to 15 miles under the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Who said what
Europa Clipper's historic mission "will tackle one of biology's core questions," The New York Times said: "Can life exist anywhere else in our solar system?" The spacecraft "won't look for life" directly,  The Associated Press said. Instead its instruments — cameras, magnetometer, thermal imager and an ice-penetrating radar, among others — "will zero in on the ingredients necessary to sustain life," including organic compounds.

"We want to determine if Europa has the potential to support simple life in the deep ocean under its icy layer," said mission chief scientist Robert Pappalardo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We don't expect fish and whales and that kind of thing." Europa isn't the only documented ocean world, but its ocean is most similar to Earth's, said program scientist Curt Niebur. "If Europa Clipper can show that in our one solar system there are two habitable worlds — Earth and Europa — that has profound implications for how common habitable worlds are in the galaxy."

What next?
Europa Clipper's 1.8 billion-mile journey is expected to take 5 1/2 years. It should enter Jupiter's orbit on April 11, 2030, before making 49 flybys of Europa over the next four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.

 
 

It's not all bad

A "weekend warrior" who does a week's worth of exercise in a day or two has a "lower risk of developing more than 200 diseases compared with inactive people," The Guardian said. A study of nearly 90,000 people in the U.K. found that "more concentrated bouts of physical activity" appear to be as effective at lowering the risk of future disease as routine sessions. This shows it is "really the volume of physical activity rather than the pattern that matters," said study lead Dr. Shaan Khurshid.

 
 
Under the radar

College students skirting around assigned readings is not a new phenomenon, but lately, that problem has evolved into a more prominent roadblock. Students now seem increasingly incapable of reading whole books, even at elite colleges. 

This lack of collegiate reading stamina likely has roots in grade school. Only 17% of teachers in third to eighth grade primarily teach whole texts, a recent EdWeek Research Center survey found.

The disappearance of full-length books in the classroom is a multifaceted problem many years in the making. Educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core "emphasized informational texts and standardized tests for over two decades," Rose Horowitch said at The Atlantic. Teachers shifted to short passages, "mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests." The pandemic accelerated the shift. Young people today also grew up with technology that can "provide quick and easy hits of information requiring lower cognitive loads," Liz Swan, a University of Colorado writing teacher, said at Psychology Today.

Academics struggle to balance meeting their students where they are and maintaining an intellectually rigorous environment. Having limited experience with reading books often means students do not have the "context to understand certain arguments or points of view," Horowitch said. Many professors feel they have "no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations."

Others see the shift as part of the natural progression of communication. Just as the written word led to the decline of oral culture, the rise of truncated writing and video/audio content will shift how we communicate again, Stuart Patterson, chair of the Shimer Great Books School, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "We need to prepare ourselves for a drastically different future," even if it means "listening rather than reading."

 
 
On this day

October 15, 1976

The first U.S. vice-presidential debate was held, with Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) facing off against Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in Houston. Mondale became vice president when his running mate, Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, was elected president. Mondale lost the 1984 presidential race to President Ronald Reagan. Dole, who rose to Senate majority leader, was defeated in the 1996 presidential election by President Bill Clinton.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

It's the end of a retail era as "Kmart shelves emptied of all but nostagia," The New York Times says on Tuesday's front page. "After back-to-back hurricanes, Florida starts cleanup effort," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. Schools in the hard-hit Tampa area are "working to reopen on Wednesday," the Tampa Bay Times says, but "where is the gas?" In the presidential race, it's "Pennsylmania '24," as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris storm the Keystone State, the Philadelphia Daily News says. Trump's "campaign takes stand against fact checks," The Washington Post says. "Some believe in Trump, without believing him," The New York Times says.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Now they got bad blood

Australian Swifties are demanding their money back after paying $130 to attend a tribute show featuring performers who read lyrics from cue cards and swore at the audience. "Taylor Made: A Celebration of Taylor Swift" was promoted as a chance for fans who missed out on tickets to Swift's Australian shows to get a taste of her Eras tour. "There was just no effort," attendee Anna Green told the New York Post. It looked like the "terrible" event was "put together in about three days."

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Dave Chan / AFP via Getty Images; Mario Tama / Getty Images; Gregg Newton / AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images