Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:
Frustrated with property crime, a group of B.C. mayors are pressing Attorney General David Eby for tougher action against repeat offenders.
In a letter, the mayors note that Vancouver alone has 40 “super-chronic” offenders, who have an average of 54 convictions each.
“Our police agencies also flagged a significant increase in the number of offenders routinely breaching conditions without consequence while on bail and failing to appear in court without consequences,” the letter says. – Global News
Russia has been using deepfakes – realistic-looking bogus video forged with artificial intelligence – as part of its war toolkit in its invasion of Ukraine. The West, warns researcher Kyle Hiebert, had better be prepared to fight similar slick disinformation as authoritarian governments ramp up campaigns to destabilize liberal democracies. – CIGI Online
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/democracies-are-dangerously-unprepared-for-deepfakes/
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:
Reasons why there might not be any other humans in the estimated trillion trillion worlds of the known and expanding universe – Big Think
https://bigthink.com/13-8/humans-universe/
Reasons why the rest of the known and expanding universe might be thankful that there are no other humans aside from those on Earth. – Nautilus
https://nautil.us/i-have-to-admit-i-have-a-very-low-opinion-of-human-beings-16884/
Reasons to be cheerful in birdland. – PennLive
Nelson Bennett, reporter:
High oil prices, fueled in part by Putin’s war in Ukraine, are providing big oil companies with some eye-watering first quarter profits, leading to calls in the UK to tax the windfalls. Royal Dutch Shell reported record first quarter earnings of US$9 billion, while BP recorded its highest quarterly profit in a decade. – Yahoo Finance
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/shell-reports-record-1st-quarter-104753126.html
“I need ammunition, not a ride…and American intelligence to target Russian generals with artillery strikes.” Ok, so Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t actually say that last part, but as The New York Times reveals, American intelligence may be one of the most effective weapons the West has provided to Ukraine. It’s that intelligence from the U.S. that has allowed Ukrainian forces to target and kill 12 Russians generals, according to the Times. – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/politics/russia-generals-killed-ukraine.html
Glen Korstrom, reporter:
I hadn’t heard of former Apple design chief Jony Ive before reading this piece, much less been aware of his influence. This piece written by Tripp Mickle, who wrote the book After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, gives an account of some of the company’s backstory. – New York Times
The Great Resignation appears to be happening in the U.S., where a record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in March. This is a sign of a strong economy as most of those workers were also hired. Hiring exceeded the quits in each sector. – CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/economy/job-openings-quits-march/index.html
