New species of owl discovered in the rainforests of Africa's Príncipe Island

by Pensoft Publishers

An illustration of Otus bikegila. Credit: Marco Correia

A new species of owl has just been described from Príncipe Island, part of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe in Central Africa. Scientists were first able to confirm its presence in 2016, although suspicions of its occurrence gained traction back in 1998, and testimonies from local people suggesting its existence could be traced back as far as 1928.

The new owl species was described in the open-access journal ZooKeys, based on multiple lines of evidence such as morphology, plumage color and pattern, vocalizations, and genetics. Data was gathered and processed by an international team led by Martim Melo (CIBIO and Natural History and Science Museum of the University of Porto), Bárbara Freitas (CIBIO and the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences) and Angelica Crottini (CIBIO).

The bird is now officially known as the Principe Scops-Owl, or Otus bikegila.

"Otus" is the generic name given to a group of small owls sharing a common history, commonly called scops-owls. They are found across Eurasia and Africa and include such widespread species as the Eurasian Scops-Owl (Otus scops) and the African Scops-Owl (Otus senegalensis).

The scientists behind the discovery further explain that the species epithet "bikegila" was chosen in homage of Ceciliano do Bom Jesus, nicknamed Bikegila—a former parrot harvester from Príncipe Island and now a ranger of its natural park.

Otus bikegila. Credit: Martim Melo

"The discovery of the Principe Scops-Owl was only possible thanks to the local knowledge shared by Bikegila and by his unflinching efforts to solve this long-time mystery," the researchers say. "As such, the name is also meant as an acknowledgment to all locally-based field assistants who are crucial in advancing the knowledge on the biodiversity of the world."

In the wild, the easiest way to recognize one would be its unique call—in fact, it was one of the main clues leading to its discovery.

"Otus bikegila's unique call is a short 'tuu' note repeated at a fast rate of about one note per second, reminiscent of insect calls. It is often emitted in duets, almost as soon as the night has fallen," Martim Melo explains.

The entire Principe Island was extensively surveyed to determine the distribution and population size of the new species. Results, published in the journal Bird Conservation International, show that the Principe Scops-Owl is found only in the remaining old-growth native forest of Príncipe in the uninhabited southern part of the island. There, it occupies an area of about 15 km2, apparently due to a preference for lower elevations. In this small area (about four times the size of Central Park), the densities of the owl are relatively high, with the population estimated at around 1000-1500 individuals.

 

Otus bikegila. Credit: Martim Melo

Nevertheless, because all individuals of the species occur in this single and very small location (of which a part will be affected in the near future by the construction of a small hydro-electric dam), researchers have proposed that the species should be classified as "Critically Endangered," the highest threat level on the IUCN Red List. This recommendation must still be evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Monitoring the population will be essential to get more precise estimates of its size and follow its trends. For this purpose, a survey protocol relying on the deployment of automatic recording units and AI to retrieve the data from these has been designed and successfully tested.

"The discovery of a new species that is immediately evaluated as highly threatened illustrates well the current biodiversity predicament," the researchers say. "On a positive note, the area of occurrence of the Principe Scops-Owl is fully included within the Príncipe Obô Natural Park, which will hopefully help secure its protection."

Martim Melo and Bikegila with an owl. Credit: Bárbara Freitas

This is the eighth known species of bird endemic to Príncipe, further highlighting the unusually high level of bird endemism for this island of only 139 km2.

Even though a new species of scops-owl was just described from Príncipe, genetic data indicated that the island was, surprisingly, likely the first in the Gulf of Guinea to be colonized by a species of scops-owl.

"Although it may seem odd for a bird species to remain undiscovered for science for so long on such a small island, this is by no means an isolated case when it comes to owls," the researchers state. "For example, the Anjouan Scops-Owl was rediscovered in 1992, 106 years after its last observation, on Anjouan Island (also known as Ndzuani) in the Comoro Archipelago, and the Flores Scops-Owl was rediscovered in 1994, 98 years after the previous report."

An aerial photo of south Principe. Credit: Alexandre Vaz

"The discovery of a new bird species is always an occasion to celebrate and an opportunity to reach out to the general public on the subject of biodiversity," says Martim Melo. "In this age of human-driven extinction, a major global effort should be undertaken to document what may soon not be anymore," he and his team state in their paper.

"Birds are likely the best studied animal group. As such, the discovery of a new bird species in the 21st century underscores both the actuality of field-based explorations aiming at describing biodiversity, and how such curiosity-driven endeavor is more likely to succeed when coupled with local ecological knowledge, the participation of keen amateur naturalists, and persistence," they add.

They believe that this "new wave of exploration, carried out by professionals and amateurs alike," will help rekindle the link to the natural world, which will be essential to help revert the global biodiversity crisis.

More information: Martim Melo et al, A new species of scops-owl (Aves, Strigiformes, Strigidae, Otus) from Príncipe Island (Gulf of Guinea, Africa) and novel insights into the systematic affinities within Otus, ZooKeys (2022). DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1126.87635

Bárbara Freitas et al, The recently discovered Principe Scops-owl is highly threatened: distribution, habitat associations, and population estimates, Bird Conservation International (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S0959270922000429

Journal information: ZooKeys 

Provided by Pensoft Publishers 

Bornean Rajah scops owl rediscovered after 125 years

 

'Earth is in our hands': Astronaut Pesquet's plea for the planet

by Juliette Collen

While on the ISS, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet watched the "sinister spectacle" of 

hurricanes, tornadoes and fires storm across Earth.

From his unique viewpoint hundreds of kilometres above Earth, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet told AFP he felt helpless watching fires rage across the planet below, calling for more to be done to protect this fragile "island of life".

Pesquet said his two tours onboard the International Space Station convinced him more than ever that the world is failing to address the threat posed by climate change.

He also witnessed moments of astonishing beauty while in space, some of which are captured in 300 photos published in his new book "La Terre entre nos mains" (Earth is in our Hands), released this week in France, the profits of which will go to charity.

Pesquet wrote that he initially "caught the photo bug" during his first tour on the ISS in 2016-2017.

But it was during his last mission, from April to November 2021, that he fully embraced the endeavour, taking constant photos and sharing his passion with his colleagues in space.

"At first I was a bit of a Sunday photographer, then I really got a taste for it," Pesquet told AFP in an interview.

"When you to arrive at the station, you have that smartphone reflex: you see something great and want to immortalise it," he said.

"But quickly you are confronted with limitations, if you want to take photos at night, for example, or of precise targets with long lenses," he added.

"It's difficult because everything is manual".

Pesquet, left, during a spacewalk outside the ISS in June, 2021.

245,000 photos

Around a dozen cameras are available to astronauts on the ISS, some permanently installed on the Cupula observation module, some in the US laboratory which has a porthole looking down on Earth.

Despite only having a few hours of leisure time a day, Pesquet took 245,000 photos during his last tour.

"Many are not very good, but in six months there is a real progression curve," he said.

Throughout the photos of rivers, oceans, deserts, mountains, sunsets and sunrises, the astronaut's amazement at the world shines through.

"The planet is so vast and diverse that you still don't feel like you've seen everything. Even after 400 days in orbit, there are still some thing that surprise me, places I haven't seen," he said.

The speed of the station, which hurtles through space at 28,000 kilometres an hour, means that "we are never above the same area at the same time of day," he said.

One day, he was surprised to find out that the northern lights appeared blue from space.

Pesquet only managed to get a photo of the phenomenon because his US colleague Shane Kimbrough told him it was taking place, after spotting it out of his bedroom window.

Pesquet in 2017, during his first tour onboard the ISS.

'Sinister spectacle'

But Pesquet did not only witness Earth's beauty.

He also captured images of a world in a state of degradation: the "sinister spectacle" of hurricanes, tornadoes and fires that stormed across the planet during his second stint of 200 days in space.

Pesquet described himself as a "helpless" witness to the carnage.

"What struck me the most were the fires. We could see the flames and smoke very clearly," he said, which gave the impression of "the end of the world."

"Like in the movies," he watched as entire regions were engulfed. Parts of southern Europe, British Columbia and California were "consumed little by little by a blanket of smoke," he added.

"I saw the difference just four years made," he said.

"My first mission was in winter and the second in summer, so it was normal that there were more fires—but overall I saw more violent phenomenona."

Watching these increasingly extreme weather events, "which we know are linked to climate change, has convinced me that we not doing enough to protect our planet," Pesquet wrote in the book.

Without science "we would be lost in the face of the magnitude of the challenges" ahead, he said.

"It's not too late, but the longer we wait..." he trailed off.

"Every year we say 'now is the time act'—and it's the same the next year, we only make small changes without a strong global impact."

© 2022 AFP

From space, astronaut sounds the alarm about climate crisis

Paranormal investigators give substance to Edmonton ghost stories

Justin Bell - Saturday

They call her the woman in white; a spectre who hovers around the projection room and climbs the grand staircase of the Princess Theatre.


Edmonton Ghost Tours' Nadine Bailey in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, a stop on one of her many tours© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Nadine Bailey, who runs Edmonton Ghost Tours, says the story of the woman in white goes back more than a century to when Strathcona was a boom town.

Sarah Anne arrived with no family or friends and rented a room on the top floor of the iconic theatre.

“About 11 months into living in Strathcona, she found herself in an unfortunate predicament; pregnant but not married,” says Bailey.

The father promised to marry her, but instead skipped town and with no options, the poor woman hanged herself in her room where her spirit’s said to still wander.

Further down Whyte Avenue, ghostly bar brawls and apparitions dressed in gold-rush era attire haunt staff and visitors at the Strathcona Hotel. It was built in 1891 by the Calgary and Edmonton Railway Company as a pitstop for those headed to the Klondike gold rush. Staff still report seeing the spirits of men in 19th-century clothing in the hotel’s halls, even after recent renovations.

Rutherford House and Pembina Hall both feature prominently in Bailey’s tours of the University of Alberta.

Pembina Hall was used as a hospital and quarantine building during the Spanish Flu outbreak. For years, staff in the building reported seeing foggy figures of women and children. Working at night, they also heard coughing coming from neighbouring offices, but the doors were locked and the lights out when they went to investigate

Pembina Hall on the University of Alberta campus is known to be haunted by an influenza nurse and a soldier.© Shaughn Butts

At Rutherford House, now a museum, staff and visitors say they’ll catch a young boy dressed in period attire out of the corner of their eye or hear the sound of a ball bouncing on the grand staircase, but no staff or guests match the description.

No child has ever died inside the house, so the origins of the apparition are somewhat hazy, though Bailey says he could have been brought into the house with a piece of furniture.

These are just a handful of the dozens of spooky stories Bailey tells on several different tours she leads from May through mid-November, tales honed over 18 years of guiding people through what goes bump in the night.

“I spend countless hours in the archives going through old newspapers and digging up stories,” says Bailey, referring to the research she does to ensure her stories are historically accurate.

Ghost stories in the city aren’t confined to Old Strathcona. The Alberta Block building, for years the home of local radio station CKUA, was also the setting for one of the city’s best-known ghost stories.


The old CKUA building on Jasper Avenue.

Sam, a caretaker of the building who loved both cigars and opera equally, was supposedly lobotomized before his time at the building for anger and aggression, once threatening premier Ernest Manning.

Sam died of a heart attack in the building, and since then, staff reported that taps would randomly turn on, cigar smoke could be detected in the air and someone could be heard singing opera.

The investigators

Beth Fowler, president of the Alberta Paranormal Investigators Society, has been through the building more than once searching for the spirit of Sam. While the cigar smoke was eventually attributed to an antique piece of furniture, they did pick up a pair of girls singing “Go back, go back” on an audio recording. It wasn’t the only voice they managed to record.

“In the area where Sam used to take his breaks, on our second investigation, we picked up a man’s groan,” says Fowler, who uses voice and video recorders to capture paranormal activity. “There was nobody in that room. We were in another building.”’

Her group was also asked to look into the Clive Hotel, in the village of the same name 140 km south of Edmonton, while it was undergoing renovations a number of years ago. Guests and staff were seeing a shadowy figure of a man around the area, with guests reporting him standing over them as they slept. Covers would fly off of beds, objects moved around on their own and the sound of a man singing floated through the air.

The spirit is assumed to be a previous owner who was notorious for his bad luck, according to Fowler, but loved the hotel so much he’d return to visit.

Fowler has been investigating paranormal activity in the province since 2003, almost two decades of searching for the supernatural. The society, which you can find on Facebook, was doing up to two investigations a month until the pandemic struck, but Fowler’s hoping to train some new members and start investigating more again soon. You can find them on their Facebook site.

Fort Edmonton’s hauntings

Fort Edmonton Park, with a collection of historical buildings and artifacts, has its own collection of spooky stories and haunted locations.

One of the park’s more pleasant ghostly encounters is at the century-old Mellon Farmhouse. In the upstairs bedroom, rather polite voices will reply to a friendly hello. Another voice has been recorded asking a passer-by to be “careful” as they walked down a steep staircase.

The Firkins House at the park, once owned by an Edmonton dentist, is another highlight for the paranormally interested. Staff members have heard people wandering about the house, only to find it’s locked up and seemingly impossible for anyone else to be in the house.

Investigations have picked up voices in the house answering “Strathcona” when asked what city they might be in, an accurate answer for a house once situated on the southside in 1911.



An unexplained purple glow appeared when this photo was taken in an upstairs bedroom at Firkins House in Fort Edmonton Park.© Larry Wong

“We do find that some of the speculation from mediums and investigators is that we are creating a paranormal hub,” says Lacey Huculak, the manager of experience development for Fort Edmonton Park. “The park is full of artifacts from various decades. Ghosts and spirits are not only attracted to and stay in buildings; they could be attached to artifacts.”

The park will be running paranormal tours in November, bringing small groups to places like Mellon Farmhouse and Firkins House, using voice recorders, motion detectors and infrared cameras as tools to search for the supernatural.

Tours at the park will be happening Nov. 9-29, starting at 7 p.m. and running for almost four hours at a time. Find tickets to the Fort Edmonton Park Paranormal Tours at fortedmontonpark.ca .

yegarts@postmedia.com

An elephant-sized demon cat is said to appear at the US Capitol before national emergencies, according to reports as far back as 1862

ktangalakislippert@insider.com (Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert) - Yesterday

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN 1957 BW

A demon cat is said to appear near the grounds of the US Capitol, the White House Historical Association says.

The cat, sometimes described as a tabby and other times black, appears before national emergencies.

Sightings were reported before the assassination of JFK and just before the stock market crash in 1929.

For more than 150 years a demon cat — some say the size of an elephant — is said to appear near the grounds of the US Capitol before national emergencies, according to the White House Historical Association.

"It's probably the most common of all the ghost stories in the Capitol," Steve Livengood, the chief tour guide of the US Capitol Historical Society told Atlas Obscura about the apparition. "Partly because of the physical evidence."

In 1898, after the Capitol Building was damaged by a gas explosion, paw prints and the initials "DC" — speculated to mean "demon cat" — appeared in the concrete poured to repair the Small Senate Rotunda. While Livengood told Atlas Obscura it was "quite possible" a cat simply walked across the wet concrete, visitors to the Capitol have seen the prints, and news reports of sightings, as evidence of the legend's veracity.
The ghostly cat, described at times as all black and sometimes with tabby stripes, is said to appear most often to guards of the US Capitol, with sightings reported before the assassination of JFK and just before the stock market crash in 1929, according to the White House Historical Association.

An 1898 Washington Post report about the cat said the creature "swells up to the size of an elephant before the eyes of the terrified observer," while in 1935 the Post reported after another sighting that the cat's eyes "glow with the all the hue and ferocity of the headlights of a fire engine."

Long considered a prophecy of coming tragedy, the first reported sighting of the demon cat was in the United States Capitol in 1862, during the Civil War. A guard was said to have fired his gun at the cat, causing it to disappear. From then on, it was seen in the Capitol building basement before national emergencies, according to the White House Historical Association.

"I can put enough pieces together to know where the legend came from," Livengood told Atlas Obscura. "The night watchmen were not professionals. They would often be some senator's ne'er-do-well brother-in-law that had a drinking problem."

The night watchmen who reported spotting the demonic creature, Livengood said, would often leverage their political connections to avoid trouble for drinking on the job, making up stories of being attacked by the fearsome creature.

"Then the other guards realize that if they see the cat and get attacked, then they get a day off," Livengood told Atlas Obscura. "And that's how history gets written."

The Capitol region has long been rumored to be home to many mythic creatures and ghostly happenings, though the demon cat remains one of the longest-standing legends of the grounds.

Its last notable sighting was in 1963, just before the assassination of JFK — there were no reports of it being seen prior to more recent national crises like the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The White House Historical Association did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN 1957 BW

COMMONWEALTH

BABALON

HEKATE BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Dead Arecibo Telescope Sends Near-Earth Asteroid Warning From Grave

Jess Thomson - 


The final data recording from the Arecibo Observatory, which collapsed in 2020, has warned of a large number of asteroids with the potential of coming near Earth, many of which could be dangerous to life.


Aerial view shows the damage at the Arecibo Observatory after one of the main cables holding the receiver broke in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on December 1, 2020. Inset image of stock image of a meteor entering the earth's atmosphere

According to a paper published on September 22 in the Planetary Science Journal, Arecibo's final stint of data collection between December 2017 and December 2019 reveals observations of 191 near-Earth asteroids, 70 of which may be "potentially hazardous."

Built in Puerto Rico in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory was the largest single-aperture telescope in the world until 2016 when the Chinese Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) began operations. It possessed a 1,000-foot-diameter spherical reflector dish designed to detect radio wavelengths from space. It collapsed on itself in late 2020. During its heyday, Arecibo detected up to 124 near-Earth asteroids per year.

Near-Earth asteroids are objects in the solar system that approach the sun at their closest point at a distance less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU), or 1.3 times the distance between the sun and the Earth, according to NASA. One AU is around 93 million miles. If one of these asteroids' orbits crosses the Earth's path, and the object is larger than 460 feet across, it is considered a "potentially hazardous" object or asteroid.

There are over 29,000 known near-Earth asteroids, and around 2,270 known potentially hazardous asteroids, 150 of which are thought to be larger than 0.6 miles in diameter.

According to the paper, the new Arecibo data found several binary asteroids, and one rarely seen "equal-mass" binary asteroid, named 2017 YE5. A binary asteroid consists of an asteroid that closely orbits another, as seen with the binary Didymos-Dimorphos system that was the target of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission in September. An equal-mass binary asteroid system is made of two nearly identical size rocks that are constantly orbiting one another. 2017 YE5 in particular is comprised of two asteroids each measuring around 2,600 and 2,950 feet in diameter.

Asteroid The Size Of One World Trade Center Set For Close Shave With Earth

Despite all these asteroids being located close to Earth, the chances of them colliding with us are extremely low.

"I believe there is no known object that will definitely hit us in a 1,000 years, Thomas Burbine, an astronomer at Mount Holyoke College, told Newsweek. "But we are discovering new objects all the time."

Collisions do occur frequently on a geological time scale: an asteroid impact was responsible for the death of the dinosaurs during the end-Cretaceous extinction around 66 million years ago. This fated asteroid was around 6 miles in diameter and left a 110 mile-diameter crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

"We could expect such an event every few tens of thousands of years—on the timescale of a normal civilisation, a significant risk," Jay Tate, the director of the Spaceguard Center observatory in the U.K., told Newsweek.

Depending on the size, speed and angle of collision of a large asteroid, an impact could have catastrophic effects on Earth.

"At the lower size estimate the immediate effects would take out a reasonably sized country—France for example," Tate said. "At the higher end the destruction would cover a continental sized area. Were it to land in the ocean the whole ocean rim would be subjected to significant tsunami as well as the other effects. The physical destruction would be, of course, only part of the problem, especially in our increasingly globalized society."

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‘Planet Killer’ Asteroid Spotted That Poses Distant Risk to Earth

Robin George Andrews - 

Astronomers on the hunt for modestly sized asteroids that could vaporize a city or bulkier beasts that could sterilize Earth’s surface have spotted a new potential threat. But there’s no immediate need to worry — it’ll be many generations until it may pose a danger to our planet.


The Dark Energy Camera at the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile was used to aid the detection of asteroids that orbit between Earth and the sun and are otherwise difficult to spot.© CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/D. Munizaga

Detecting uncharted space rocks relies on spying sunlight glinting off their surfaces. But some asteroids occupy corners of the sky in which the sun’s glare smothers them, and, like embers flitting in front of a thermonuclear bonfire, they fade from view.

Last year, in the hope of finding asteroids cloaked by excessive sunlight, an international team of astronomers co-opted a camera primarily designed to investigate the universe’s notoriously elusive dark matter. In an announcement Monday based on a survey first published in September in The Astronomical Journal, the researchers announced the discovery of three new light-drowned projectiles.

One of them, 2022 AP7, is roughly a mile long, and its orbit crosses Earth’s path around the sun, getting as near as 4.4 million miles to Earth itself — uncomfortably close by cosmic standards (although far more distant than Earth’s moon). That makes 2022 AP7 “the largest potentially hazardous asteroid found in the last eight years or so,” said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and an author of the study.


An artist’s impression of an asteroid orbiting closer to the sun. Such asteroids are difficult to spot except during a few moments close to twilight.© DOE FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA /J. da Silva – Space Engine

After the asteroid was discovered in January, additional observatories studied its motion and other astronomers retrospectively identified it in older images. This data set made it clear that it won’t be paying Earth a visit during the next century, and perhaps far longer.

“There is an extremely low probability of an impact in the foreseeable future,” said Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who was not involved with the study.

Related video: OTD in Space - Oct 31: Skull-Shaped Halloween Asteroid Flies by Earth

But the gravitational pull of objects around the solar system — including our own planet — ensures that Earth-crossing asteroids don’t dance the same way forever. The asteroid 2022 AP7 is no exception. “Over time, this asteroid will get brighter and brighter in the sky as it starts crossing Earth’s orbit closer and closer to where the Earth actually is,” Dr. Sheppard said.

It’s possible that “way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants,” said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast who was not involved with the study.

And if, in the unluckiest of timelines, 2022 AP7 ultimately impacts Earth?

“This is what we call a planet killer,” Dr. Sheppard said. “If this one hits the Earth, it would cause planetwide destruction. It would be very bad for life as we know it.”

But as we are safe for many generations, this asteroid’s orbit is not its most noteworthy feature. “The interesting thing about 2022 AP7 is its relatively large size,” said Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University who was not involved with the study. Its existence suggests that other elephantine asteroids, veiled by the sun’s glare, remain disconcertingly undiscovered.

Today, astronomers looking for potentially hazardous asteroids — those that get at least as close as 4.6 million miles to Earth and are too chunky to be incinerated without incident by our atmosphere — focus on finding rocks around 460 feet across. There are most likely tens of thousands of them, and fewer than half have been identified. They could wreak destruction on a country-size scale. Such threats have motivated NASA and other space agencies to develop planetary defense missions like DART, the spacecraft that successfully adjusted the orbit of a small, nonthreatening asteroid in September.

Most asteroids that are two-thirds of a mile long and larger — far less common, but capable of global devastation — have already been found. But “we know some are still out there to find,” Dr. Fitzsimmons said.

Several no doubt sneak about near Mercury and Venus. But it’s “incredibly difficult to discover objects interior to Earth’s orbit with our current discovery telescopes,” Dr. Thomas said. During most hours of the day, the sun blinds Earth’s telescopes and objects can be hunted only in the few minutes around twilight.

To overcome this limitation, the astronomers who detected 2022 AP7 relied on the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. Not only can it examine large swaths of the sky, but it is also sensitive enough to find faint objects engulfed by sunlight. So far, the camera found two additional near-Earth objects: a planet-killer in size whose orbit never crosses Earth’s but takes it closer to the sun than any other known asteroid, flambéing its surface at temperatures extreme enough to liquefy lead; and a smaller, country-killer-size rock that poses no risk.

The twilight survey’s capabilities will eventually be eclipsed by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission. Launching later this decade, this Earth-orbiting infrared observatory will stare into the sun’s glare and find most of the hazardous asteroids that other surveys have missed.

“We want to do everything possible to not be surprised,” Dr. Thomas said. That’s why these surveys exist: to find Earth-impacting asteroids many lifetimes in advance so that, through energetic prods or nuclear explosions, we can send these monsters back into the shadows.

New potentially hazardous asteroid discovered

Issued on: 01/11/2022 - 

Three near-Earth asteroids -- one potentially hazardous -- were found using a high-tech instrument at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile 

ROGER SMITH, AURA, NOAO, NSF 

Washington (AFP) – An international team of astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of a large asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth, creating a small chance far in the future of a catastrophic collision.

The 1.5 kilometer- (0.9 mile-) wide asteroid, named 2022 AP7, was discovered in area notoriously difficult to spot objects due to the glare from the Sun.

It was found along with two other near-Earth asteroids using a high-tech instrument on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile that was originally developed to study dark matter.

"2022 AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit, which makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, but it currently does not now or anytime in the future have a trajectory that will have it collide with the Earth," said lead author of the findings, astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The potential threat comes from the fact that like any orbiting object, its trajectory will be slowly modified due to myriad gravitational forces, notably by planets. Forecasts are therefore difficult on the very long term.

The newly-discovered asteroid is "the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years," said NOIRLab, a US-funded research group that operates multiple observatories.

2022 AP7 takes five years to circle the Sun under its current orbit, which at its closest point to Earth remain several million kilometers away.

The risk is therefore very small, but in case of a collision, an asteroid of that size "would have a devastating impact on life as we know it," said Sheppard. He explained that dust launched into the air would have a major cooling effect, provoking an "extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years."

His team's results were published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal. The two other asteroids pose no risk to Earth, but one is the closest asteroid to the Sun ever found.

Some 30,000 asteroids of all sizes -- including more than 850 larger than a kilometer wide -- have been catalogued in the vicinity of the Earth, earning them the label "Near Earth Objects" (NEOs). None of them threaten Earth for the next 100 years.

According to Sheppard, there are "likely 20 to 50 large NEOs left to find," but most are on orbits that put them in the Sun's glare.

In preparation for a future discovery of a more threatening object, NASA conducted a test mission in late September in which it collided a spacecraft with an asteroid, proving that it was possible to change its trajectory.

© 2022 AFP

Why Bill C-22 will be a ‘life-saver’ for many Canadians amid possible recession

Irelyne Lavery - Yesterday 

As the cost of living continues to soar, Canadians with disabilities are fighting for financial support from the federal government in the face of a possible recession.


A rally held in Ottawa by Disability Without Poverty on Oct. 19 to show their support for Bill C-22.© Disability Without Poverty

Sponsored by Minister of Employment Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, Carla Qualtrough, the government is working to establish federal support for Canadians with disabilities who are living in poverty.

Known as the Canada Disability Benefit Act, a “consequential” amendment to the Income Tax Act would also be made should it pass.

Advocates are urging the government to move on it quickly.

“People with disabilities face barriers in our society. People with disabilities living in poverty face even further barriers,” Rabia Khedr, national director at Disability Without Poverty (DWP), told Global News.

Read more:
How Canadians can trim expenses as recession fears grow

“This struggle to survive with dignity is becoming worse and worse for people with disabilities,” she said.

The bill was first introduced in 2021 before the last federal election and numbered C-35. But as parliament dissolved, the bill stalled.

“It died with the end of the last parliament,” Khedr said.

Reintroduced as Bill C-22 this year on June 2, the act passed its second reading with unanimous support in the House of Commons on Oct. 18.

“We are pushing really hard for this benefit because for people with disabilities — with rising inflation and the ongoing circumstances around pandemic recovery — they’re falling even further behind than they were pre-pandemic,” said Khedr.

“This benefit is going to be a life saver.”

Khedr, who has been a part of DWP since its inception at the beginning of 2021, wants to see the bill passed this year and funds delivered by next fall.

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“Pass Bill C-22 in 2022. Let’s not delay,” she said.

On Oct. 19, DWP showed their support for the bill by rallying at Parliament Hill in Ottawa. They used their protest signs to transform parking spaces across the downtown into accessible spots.

“Imagine if everything was, in fact, accessible around us,” Khedr said.

There are still unanswered questions when it comes to eligibility and how much people would receive from the government under the benefit, but once passed, the particulars will be made clear as part of the Regulatory process, according to Tara Beauport, press secretary for Qualtrough.

“The details of the benefit, including the benefit amount, and eligibility criteria, will be informed by engagement with persons with disabilities and the provinces and territories,” Beauport told Global News.

“We’re working hard and fast to get this done for Canadians. Throughout this time, we haven’t stopped working to support people in need, including people with disabilities,” she said.

There are still questions about how the act will be federally coordinated with other provincial benefits, but the government is “working closely with the provinces and territories to ensure harmonization on the design,” Beauport said.

“The Minister’s number one concern with this benefit is to ensure that everyone who receives it is better off. This in an income supplement, not an income replacement,” she said, noting the bill is a priority for the federal government.

“Twenty-three per cent of Canadians identify as having a disability. We are the largest minority. We are a family member, a friend, a neighbour and a co-worker,” Qualtrough said during a speech in the House in Sept.

“The disability community is vibrant, talented and diverse,” she said.

"Bill C-22 would give us the opportunity to send a clear message to working-aged persons with disabilities and, quite frankly, to every person with a disability that we will no longer sit by and watch them struggle to make ends meet, struggle to live with dignity, struggle as they live a life of uncertainty and poverty."

Earlier this month in parliament, Qualtrough noted passing this bill would lift "hundreds of thousands" of persons with disabilities out of poverty.

"This bill could be a game-changer in the lives of so many people," she said.

Read more:
Bank of Canada says economy will ‘stall’ amid rate hike but skirts recession call

Now that the bill has passed a second reading, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) is undertaking a study and as of Oct. 29 has asked Canadians to submit written briefs for their review of the benefit.

However, even after the bill passes the committee stage there is still a long way to go before it officially becomes law.

When the study is completed, there will be a report stage and a final reading in the House before the bill reaches the Senate.

Though inflation is slowing — down to 6.9 per cent in September compared with a high of 8.1 per cent in June — it remains one of the biggest concerns both for Canadians and the government.

The Bank of Canada has been combating decades-high inflation with aggressive interest rate hikes since March. The central bank raised interest rates last week for the sixth time this year, with the half-percentage point rate hike bringing its key interest rate to 3.75 per cent.

According to Khedr, it's time to help people with disabilities.

"Investing in lifting people with disabilities out of poverty, of ending disability poverty, is also an investment in our economy," Khedr said.

"People with disabilities have the buying power of $47 billion in our economy. We will be adding a few more billions if we give them a top-up benefit that will stimulate the economy and benefit us all."

Though there is still more work to be done, to see the bill passed would be an "important milestone in the journey of improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities," for Khedr.

"This will provide them the dignity they need to live and thrive," she said.

— With files from the Canadian Press

BACK TO WORK VIOLATES ILO LAW
CUPE to stage provincewide protest Friday in response to Ontario's ban on strike


TORONTO — A union representing approximately 55,000 Ontario education workers said Monday its members will walk off the job on Friday despite the government tabling legislation to impose contracts and ban a strike.


Ontario to introduce education contract today to avert looming support staff strike

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Laura Walton, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employee's Ontario School Board Council of Unions, said whether workers continue to protest after Friday "will be left up to what happens."

"I am so proud because our members have said, 'Enough is enough,'" Walton said.

The Ontario government introduced legislation Monday to impose a contract on CUPE's education workers -- including librarians, custodians and early childhood educators -- and avert a strike that was set to start Friday.

CUPE has said it will explore every avenue to fight the bill, but the government said it intends to use the notwithstanding clause to keep the eventual law in force despite any constitutional challenges. The clause allows the legislature to override portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for a five-year term.

"We want to make sure that there's no issues, litigation or otherwise, that could essentially get these kids back out of class because of strikes locally or provincially," Education Minister Stephen Lecce said.

"This proposal, this legislation, provides absolute stability for kids to the extent we can control it and ensures they remain in a classroom, that nothing, nothing at all now or in the future could prevent a child's right to be in a classroom learning."

The government had been offering raises of two per cent a year for workers making less than $40,000 and 1.25 per cent for all others.

Lecce said the new, four-year deal would give 2.5 per cent annual raises to workers making less than $43,000 and 1.5 per cent raises for all others.

CUPE has said its workers, which make on average $39,000 a year, are generally the lowest paid in schools and it has been seeking annual salary increases of 11.7 per cent.

CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn said workerswere in a legal strike position as of this Thursday and they will take a stand for public education.

"If that bill passes before Friday it doesn’t matter. If they say it’s illegal to strike then we will be on a political protest," he said.

Hahn said education workers were subject, a decade ago, to an imposed wage freeze and back-to-work legislation from the then-Liberal government, and more recently legislation by the Ford government that capped public sector employees' wage increases at one per cent a year.

"We may in fact, challenge this in court, but we are first going to challenge it in our communities. We are not going to allow our rights to be legislated away. We are not going to simply stand by and accept this attempt by the government to bully our members," he said.

Related video: CUPE serves province with strike notice for Ontario education workers

CUPE serves province with strike notice for Ontario education workers

At least four Ontario school boards have said they would shut down schools if support staff fully withdraw their services. The Toronto District School Board said in an update late Monday that it will have no option but to close all of its schools Friday.

"Student supervision and safety are our top priorities and without the important services of these school-based employees, we cannot guarantee that our learning environments will remain safe and clean for all students," the board said in its statement.

Lecce said it was "regretful" to hear that CUPE plans to walk out despite the legislation.

"It is certainly our intention that kids will be in school, we will pass a law, and obviously, I think there's not a parent in this province who would be supportive of children staying home for even one day of the strike," he said.

The legislation sets out fines for violating a prohibition on strikes for the life of the agreement of up to $4,000 per employee per day, while there are fines of up to $500,000 for the union.

Walton said the union would foot the bill for any such fines.

David Doorey, a York University professor specializing in labour and employment law, said there has been only one other Canadian use of the notwithstanding clause in back-to-work legislation — in Saskatchewan in the 1980s — but the law has changed dramatically since then.

"Today, the Charter protects a right to collective bargaining and to strike," he said.

"As a result, the Ontario government requires the notwithstanding clause to protect itself from a lawsuit...Almost certainly, the new Keeping Students in Class Act would violate the Charter rights of the educational workers."

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the notwithstanding clause was never meant to be used in contract negotiations.

"This misuse, and the flagrant disregard for individual rights is wrong and it is dangerous to our constitutional democracy," she said in a statement.

The four major teachers' unions are also in the midst of contract negotiations with the government and the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario said Monday that it walked away from the table for the day in support of CUPE.

"We unequivocally condemn the Ford government’s imposition of a concessionary contract on some of the lowest-paid education professionals working in Ontario’s schools," ETFO president Karen Brown wrote in a statement.

The average CUPE employee makes $26.69 an hour. There are vast differences in workers' salaries, even in the same job classification, due to the number of hours worked in a week — some employees work 40, others work 35, while some work less than that — differences in boards, as well as some employees getting paid for 12 months a year while others are laid off for the summers.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation said it stands in solidarity with CUPE members against the "undermining" of their collective bargaining rights. The union said its focus remained on making progress at the bargaining table in its own negotiations.

Government House Leader Paul Calandra said the legislature would be in session Tuesday at 5 a.m. in order to speed up passage of the legislation.

CUPE and the government had made little progress at the bargaining table over the past few months other than agreeing to standardizing bereavement leave. They were far apart on wages, with CUPE saying an additional $3.25 an hour would help the lowest-paid education workers catch up after years of wage freezes and restraint, as well as high inflation.

Lecce had framed their proposals as a 50-per-cent increase in compensation, which added together the wage requests, overtime pay, preparation time, an extra week of work, and professional development.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2022.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press

Ontario education workers will walk off the job Friday despite anti-strike legislation, CUPE says

CBC/Radio-Canada 

TODAY


The union representing some 55,000 Ontario education workers says its members will walk off the job Friday in a province-wide protest, regardless of Ontario's proposed anti-strike legislation.

At a news conference Monday, the union said education workers will "withdraw their labour" to protest against the move by the province, which they called a "monstrous overreach."

The Ontario government introduced the Keeping Students in Class Act on Monday, which invokes the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on education workers and avert a strike. The clause — or Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — gives provincial legislatures or Parliament the ability, through the passage of a law, to override certain portions of the charter for a five-year term.

Education workers could face fines of up to $4,000 per day should they strike, the legislation states.

The union held the news conference hours after the provincial government announced it plans to bring in legislation to block the potential job action.

CUPE has said they will explore every avenue to fight the bill, but the government said it intends to use the notwithstanding clause to keep the eventual law in force despite any constitutional challenges.

Speaking to reporters Monday afternoon, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce called the union's decision to proceed with striking "unacceptable."

"The government has been left with no choice but to take immediate action today," Lecce said, indicating the union rejected its latest offer, adding he believes the legislation is in fact constitutional.

The government had been offering raises of two per cent a year for workers making less than $40,000 and 1.25 per cent for all others. Lecce said the new, four-year deal would give 2.5 per cent annual raises to workers making less than $43,000 and 1.5 per cent raises for all others.

CUPE has said its workers, which make on average $39,000 a year, are generally the lowest paid in schools and the union has been seeking annual salary increases of 11.7 per cent.

"The government is going to pass the bill. We're going to move forward," said Lecce.

The education minister said its move was not a blanket approach, saying it will continue to negotiate with other education unions.

Related video: CUPE serves province with strike notice for Ontario education workers

Unclear how long protest could go on

As for whether the job action will run longer than one day, union officials said that remains to be seen.

The union also said it will come up with financial support for any consequences that workers might face for protesting in the face of the legislation.

On Sunday, education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) gave the required five days' notice for job action, positioning its members — including educational assistants, custodians and early childhood educators, but not teachers — to go on full strike as early as Friday.

Several Ontario school boards have said they will shut down schools if support staff withdraw their services.

The government and education workers returned to the bargaining table Sunday afternoon but there doesn't appear to have been any progress since.

Union officials said the province's offer put forward Sunday would have provided only a nickel more for each worker, giving the union an ultimatum. Instead of the government holding a negotiation, officials said they learned the government intended to legislate against a strike if the union didn't acquiesce.


Laura Walton, dressed as Rosie the Riveter on Halloween, speaking at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Monday.© Evan Mitsui/CBC

"If Stephen Lecce cared about kids, he wouldn't have handed $200 to parents," said CUPE member Laura Walton, dressed in a Rosie the Riveter Halloween costume, an American character representing women who worked in factories and shipyards during the First World War — a choice she said was intended to send a message.

Still, she said, "negotiations aren't done."

ETFO walks away from bargaining Monday

Meanwhile, in a news release Monday, the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario said it "unequivocally" condemned the Ford government's move.

The union representing some 83,000 Ontario elementary teachers said it ended its own negotiations with the government for Monday because it could not "in good conscience, sit across the table from the government," ETFO President Karen Brown said.

"ETFO stands with CUPE members and their right to strike for better pay and working conditions, and not with a regressive government that is cloaking anti-labour legislation as being pro-education," said Brown.

The Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) also issued a statement, calling the proposed legislation "heavy-handed," "effectively undermining and disrupting their rights to free and fair collective bargaining."

The union, which represents more than 60,000 members across Ontario says it "stands in solidarity" with CUPE's members, but that its focus remains on its own negotiations with the province.

"We continue to call on the Ford government to work within a fair process that respects and upholds all workers' Charter rights, and to invest in public education and negotiate a fair deal," OSSTF President Karen Littlewood said.

Ford government to table legislation to impose contract on education sector union

By Colin D'Mello Global News
Updated October 31, 2022 


The Ford government will introduce legislation on Monday to impose a four-year contract on thousands of education support workers in order to avoid a strike — a move that will likely trigger a court challenge by the union.

The dramatic escalation in the months-long contract negotiations came after the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 55,000 custodians, clerical staff, librarians, and early childhood educators, gave the government its notice to strike on Friday, Nov. 4.

READ MORE: Education workers rally outside Toronto Congress Centre ahead of Doug Ford event

CUPE’s Laura Walton characterized the offer as an “ultimatum” from the Ford government after months of negotiations.

The government’s latest offer, which will now be legally imposed on union workers, would give employees earning less than $43,000 a 2.5 per cent salary increase per year, while those earning above $43,000 would receive a 1.5 per cent yearly increase in pay.

That is a slight increase from the previous offer, which was 1.25 per cent for those making over $40,000 and 2.0 per cent for those making below that.

CUPE asked the government for an 11 per cent increase in wages, citing the high cost of living and historically low pay.

READ MORE: Mediated contract negotiations between government and CUPE break down ahead of strike deadline

In a statement, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government presented a “generous” offer and was going to follow through on a promise to keep students in class.

“Because CUPE refuses to withdraw their intent to strike, in order to avoid shutting down classes we will have no other choice but to introduce legislation tomorrow, which will ensure that students remain in-class to catch up on their learning,” Lecce said.

The union, however, is warning the government it could end up in court over the legislation and questions whether the government negotiated in good faith.

“They had the legislation all drawn up, which proves they had no intention of negotiating fairly with education workers,” Walton said at a late Sunday news conference.

While Lecce has been warning for weeks that government wouldn’t allow a strike to proceed given several years of school disruptions due to COVID-19, the Minister always maintained his mandate from the Premier was to reach a negotiated settlement with the union.

But as contract talks stalled, the government shifted its tone and focused more on preventing a strike rather than being able to reach a deal.

The legislation, set to be tabled at 1 p.m. Monday, is also a “signal” to teachers’ unions, a source said, which are still in the early stages of bargaining with the government.

“Our intentions are clear,” the source said of the government’s plans of imposing contracts on other education-sector unions.

By imposing a contract, Premier Doug Ford will be copying former-premier Dalton McGuinty’s work from 2012, when the Ontario Liberals imposed a contract on teachers’ unions ahead of a strike.

Bill 115, Putting Students First Act, froze wages and limited union members’ right to strike, triggering a court challenge by five education sector unions.

An Ontario Superior Court judge later ruled that Bill 115 “substantially interfered with meaningful collective bargaining” and that the process of imposing a contract was “fundamentally flawed.”

READ MORE: Wynne says legislation that imposed contracts on teachers in 2012 was ‘problematic’

“It could not, by its design, provide meaningful collective bargaining. Ontario, on its own, devised a process. It set the parameters which would allow it to meet fiscal restraints it determined and then set a program which limited the ability of the other parties to take part in a meaningful way,” Judge Thomas Lederer wrote in a 2016 judgment.

Earlier this year the Elementary Teachers Federation was awarded a $103-million “remedy” to distribute to former and current members of the union.

Once the Ford government tables the legislation they will have just four days to pass the legislation, in order to avoid CUPE’s province-wide strike currently scheduled for Nov. 4.

CUPE will provide ‘financial support’ for members who face fines for joining protest: Walton

 

CUPE to stage provincewide protest in response to ban on strike