Tag Archives: Greater Campbell River

Communications

From Lanzhou to BC: Bots Overwhelming Cortes Currents

Editor’s note added Dec 24, 2025 – China now leads the world in terms of internet users – 1,1 billion, as compared to 806 million users in India and 302 million in the United States. As this comes at a time when the main source of traffic is now non-human, the web is flooded by bots. 7,824 from Lanzhou, China, came to Cortes Currents on December 23 and 24, 2025. They were ‘Search engine crawlers,’ ‘AI crawlers,’ and ‘AI Assistants’ that came directly to the website. They made the vast majority of close to 33,000 requests of the website’s server. The ‘most crawled’ content was Cortes Currents homepage and, on average, the bots’ visits lasted less than a second.

There have been numerous reports of cyberattacks, bots, and hackers this month. On November 13, the Wallstreet Journal reported what is reputedly the world’s first cyberespionage operation largely carried out using AI. The makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude subsequently revealed that they detected this operation in September. The attacks were carried out by Chinese hackers targeting large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies.

Google Chrome is the world’s most popular browser, holding two-thirds of the market share. Consequently, it is also a frequent target for cyberattacks.

What does this all mean for a tiny website like Cortes Currents, located in a remote corner of British Columbia?

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Business, Food

Measuring Workforce Exposure to the US Tradewar

A new interactive dashboard on the Institute for Research on Public Policy website measures the vulnerability that specific Canadian communities have in the US trade war.

“Canada’s reliance on the U.S. market has left certain communities vulnerable to shifting trade policies, including tariffs and protectionist measures,” explained Rachel Samson, the IRPP’s vice-president of research.

“Our dashboards can help identify which communities could experience challenges if tariffs are applied to sectors they depend on, allowing governments to work with the community to plan effective responses.”

The data is organized around Canada’s 293 census divisions.  

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Health

Greater Campbell River Continues To Be Among BC’s worst Local Health Areas For Toxic Drug Deaths

Greater Campbell River continues to be one of the worst Local Health Areas in the province for unregulated drug deaths, according to the BC Coroner’s Service. Vancouver-Centre North, Terrace, Prince George and Grand Forks were also named.   

So far this year, 1,925 British Columbians have lost their lives because of unregulated drug use. 155 of them died in October. 

These numbers come on the heels of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s recently released State of Mental Health in Canada 2024, which reported that “32% of all apparent drug-related deaths in Canada occurred in British Columbia. This province is ground zero in the drug toxicity crisis. The high rates of housing insecurity and unaffordability, core housing need and poverty all contribute to these drug-related harms.” 

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