Tina Smith remembers her son for his laid-back nature, his sense of humour and his love for helping others.
Monday marked 10 years since Sgt. Kirk Taylor of Yarmouth, N.S., was killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan. He was 28.
“It was the worst day of my life,” said Smith in a phone interview from her home in Arizona.
Taylor served as a reservist with the 84th Independent Field Battery, RCA and volunteered with the 110 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps in Yarmouth.
On Dec. 30, 2009, Taylor, four other soldiers and a Canadian journalist were killed after the group’s light armoured vehicles were struck by an improvised explosive device in the city of Kandahar.
The flag-draped coffin carrying the remains of Sgt. Kirk Taylor during his funeral service in Yarmouth, N.S., on Jan. 11, 2010. Taylor was one of four soldiers and a journalist killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, 2009. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)
Several soldiers and another Canadian civilian were also injured in the blast.
Taylor, a former sea cadet in Barrington, joined the military in his late teens.
Making an impact
Smith said he enjoyed being a member of the Armed Forces because he liked helping people and he appreciated the structure it gave his life.
She said he also enjoyed volunteering with the Yarmouth cadet corps.
Smith recently came back to Nova Scotia in November for the unveiling of a commemorative coin that honoured Taylor and marked the 115th anniversary of the corps in the area.
Tina Smith said Taylor was known for his dry, witty sense of humour, and his penchant for giving nicknames to everyone he knew. (Submitted by Michael Harquail)
There, she was able to get a better idea of the kind of impact he made after speaking to the parents of some of the cadets who were there while Kirk was a leader.
“[They] said that if it hadn’t been for Kirk, they don’t know where their son and daughter would have been because he was able to to find them a structure that they were looking for,” she said.
“I thought that was pretty nice, after all these years, to hear that.”
In his civilian life, Taylor worked at the Yarmouth Association for Community Residential Options, which provides residential supports for people with disabilities.
The 110 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps unveiled a coin in November to celebrate the anniversary of its 115-year anniversary, as well as commemorate the 10th anniversary since Taylor was killed. (Submitted by Capt. Gary Hudson)
In late 2008, Taylor called his mother and told her he wanted to go to Afghanistan. He was inspired after recently attending a lecture by Rick Hillier, former chief of defence staff.
“I felt like a big horse just kicked me in the heart,” Smith recalled.
“You know, sometimes as a mom you recognize some of the dangers that can happen to children. Maybe you recognize them sooner than when your children recognize them.”
Smith said Taylor went to Afghanistan because he wanted to help the people there. (Sam Augustin)
Still, she supported his decision because she “knew that’s what he wanted.”
“I tried to teach all of my children that it’s a big, wide world out there, go shake it by the tail,” she said.
“Well then, how do you complain about how they’re going to shake it when they decide they want to do something?”
Taylor shipped out to Afghanistan in October 2009, just a couple of months before he was killed.
Learning to live again
For Smith, the first year after her son’s death was the worst. But this past year was a close second.
“Somehow, a 10th anniversary seems way worse than a second or third, or all the rest up to nine,” she said.
“Sometimes, I feel like time stopped on that day 10 years ago. Other times, it feels like, ‘Where did 10 years disappear to?’
“Overall, it takes a long time to learn how to live again.”
But one thing has kept Smith going: knowing that she’s not alone.
From left: Sgt. George Miok, Pte. Garrett William Chidley, Sgt. Kirk Taylor and Cpl. Zachery McCormack, were killed in a bomb blast 10 years ago in Afghanistan. ((Sgt. Daren Kraus/DND/Canadian Press))
In the past few years, Smith has connected with the family members of the other soldiers who died that day — Sgt. George Miok, 28, of Edmonton, Cpl. Zachery McCormack, 21, of Edmonton, and Pte. Garrett William Chidley, 21, of Langley, B.C. — as well as with the family of Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang, who was 34.
“It’s just amazing to see where we all are in our stages of grief, and how we all deal with it,” said Smith.
“But we all know we have that one thing in common, so there’s been a strength that’s come with that.”
Late last month, Smith flew to Edmonton to attend an open house, organized by McCormack’s friends and family, for those connected to the five killed. There, she got to find out more about her son from the people who served with him.
Some of the family members of the Canadians who were killed or injured in the Dec. 30, 2009, bomb blast in Afghanistan gathered in Edmonton on the 10-year-anniversary. From left: Armande McCormack (Zachery McCormack’s mother), Tina Smith (Kirk Taylor’s mother), Anna Miok (George Miok’s mother), Heather Middleton (Joshua Baker’s sister), and Catherine Lang (Michelle Lang’s aunt). All but Baker died in the same blast that killed Taylor. (Submitted by Tina Smith)
She also shared her grief with the other people mourning their loved ones lost to war.
“There was a whole lot of pain in that room, but there was also a whole lot of healing before the evening was finished,” she said.
Learning about everyone’s experiences with grief helped her to better understand the “ripple effect” that began a decade ago when the blast happened.
‘We just couldn’t stop hugging’
One of the highlights of the evening, said Smith, was meeting a man who was badly injured in the same blast that killed Taylor.
“All we could do when we met each other was just kind of look at each other, and just give each other a hug. We just couldn’t stop hugging,” she said.
“I told him, ‘I’m so glad that you made it, that you’re alive.’ Because as hard as it was to lose the four boys and Michelle the way we did, I’m so thankful that the rest of them survived.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
