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CANADIAN FOOTBALL AUTHORITIES CANCELLED AN UPCOMING FRIENDLY AGAINST IRAN ON THURSDAY FOLLOWING A BACKLASH AGAINST THE GAME LED BY PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU. Canada's game against fellow World Cup qualifiers Iran in Vancouver on June 5 was seen by Canadian football authorities as pivotal preparation for this year's finals in Qatar in one of the few remaining international windows of 2022. However, the fixture provoked a storm of controversy, with Trudeau voicing opposition to the game, describing it this week as a "bad idea.“ Stinging criticism also came from the families of passengers killed when Iranian armed forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 after take-off from Tehran on January 8, 2020. Eighty-five Canadian citizens and permanent residents were among the 176 people who perished in the tragedy, which the Iranian armed forces later described as a mistake. UNBEATEN ESTEGHLAL CLAIMS IRAN CHAMPIONSHIP. Esteghlal Football Club celebrated the championship of the Persian Pro League 2021-22 season on Monday at Azadi Stadium in Tehran in the presence of 100,000 of its fans, after going undefeated throughout all of their 30 matches in the league. The ceremony was held after the 0-0 draw between Esteghlal and Naft Masjed Soleyman, while Blues had secured the title three weeks before the end of the season. Esteghlal became the first team to go the Persian Gulf Pro Football League season unbeaten. The club also broke the record for most points in an IPL season, with 68 points. Esteghlal has been the Iranian champion nine times: five in the old league and four in the current Persian Pro league. Blues won the title under the management of Farhad Majidi and his Italian assistant Gabriele Pin. The last time Esteghlal won the IPL title was in the 2012-13 season, when Majidi was the team's captain. ELON MUSK HAS 'SUPER BAD FEELING' ABOUT ECONOMY, WANTS TO SLASH TESLA JOBS. San Francisco - Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a "super bad feeling" about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives on Thursday seen by Reuters. The message came two days after the world's richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company. Tesla (TSLA) employed around 100,000 people in the company and its subsidiaries at the end of 2021, according to its annual SEC filing. The company was not immediately available for comment. Musk's stark warning of a potential recession and the knock-on effect for automakers is the most direct and high-profile forecast of its kind in the industry. While concerns about the risk of a recession have grown, demand for Tesla cars and other electric vehicles has remained strong and many of the traditional indicators of a downturn - including increasing dealer inventories in the United States — have not materialized. But Tesla has struggled to restart production at its Shanghai factory after Covid-19 lockdowns forced costly outages at the plant. Musk's gloomy outlook echoes recent comments from executives including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs (GS) President John Waldron. A "hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way," Dimon said this week. Inflation in the United States is hovering at 40-year highs and has caused a jump in the cost of living for Americans, while the Federal Reserve faces the difficult task of dampening demand enough to curb inflation while not causing a recession. IRANIAN RIAL FALLS FURTHER AS PROTESTS OVER DECIMATED ECONOMY CONTINUE. Iran's currency, the rial, has continued to weaken as unrest in the country grows over an economy in shambles due to the effects of U.S. sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program. The value of one U.S. dollar rose on June 1 to as high as 31,500 rials, compared with 28,150 rials a month before, according to the foreign-exchange site Bonbast.com, its lowest level since September 2021. The stranglehold of U.S. sanctions along with government mismanagement has led to soaring inflation, high youth unemployment and rising poverty, while recently elected President Ebrahim Raisi's administration has struggled to halt the economic tailspin. A STAR CALLED ‘ EARENDEL ’ COULD BE THE MOST DISTANT EVER SEEN. Its light took nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth, researchers say. The arrow points to a star that was shining only 900 million years after the Big Bang, researchers say. It is visible because a cluster of galaxies magnified its light. A lucky lineup may have revealed a star that started shining before the universe’s one billionth birthday. This star appears to be the most distant one ever seen. Its light began traveling some 12.9 billion years before it reached Earth. That’s about 4 billion years longer than the former record holder. The universe includes all things that are found today in space and time. Studying this early starlight could help researchers learn more about what the universe was like when it was very young. It is now about 13.8 billion years old. SCIENTISTS SUCCESSFULLY GROW PLANTS IN SOIL FROM THE MOON. The study is paramount to NASA's long-term goals in human space exploration, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release. The research could also have implications for plants growing in harsh conditions on Earth, he added. "We'll need to use resources found on the Moon and Mars to develop food sources for future astronauts living and operating in deep space," Nelson said. In the study, researchers planted the seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana — a plant related to mustard greens, as well as other cruciferous vegetables, including broccoli and cauliflower — in lunar soil, which was sampled directly from the moon from missions Apollo 11, 12 and 17. To compare, researchers also planted the seeds in a lunar simulant, designed to closely mimic real lunar soil.