WHAT ALBERTA WILL LOOK LIKE
It’s out of control’: Westlock County residents concerned over Crown land abuse AFTER 4 YEARS OF  KENNEY AND UCP

Nicole Stillger 

GLOBAL NEWS

APRIL 23,2021

© Julien Fournier / Global News Abuse of crown land in Westlock County has been an ongoing problem according to officials.

There's a section of Crown land in Westlock County, Alta., north of Edmonton, that looks like a landfill.

Old appliances, bullet casings, targets and other debris are scattered everywhere.

"It’s out of control," said John Biro, Westlock County protective services manager.


"A lot of garbage coming in, excessive shooting. They’re using the Crown lands as a gun range."

According to Biro, the abuse of the Crown land has been an ongoing problem, and people are tired of it.

"The shooting goes on 364 days a year. The only day it didn't this year was Christmas," said Westlock County resident Bevin McNelly.

"You can't even sit outside on a Sunday afternoon with the family and have a meal because all it is is bang, bang, bang."

Read more: Fees for recreational Crown land use in Alberta government’s new proposed bill

"We have animals at large here and all the shooting and stuff. It's not a safe place to be, and then you have the quads and the fires," said Shane Henry, who lives close by.

That's another major issue. It's fire season, and officials are on high alert.

"We lose a lot of sleep," Biro said. "This area has been proven to be a problem in the past, and it's been threatening out many residents in the area.

"Even for emergency services, we've had numerous fires over the past, and we've had to stop operations due to the fact that we've got live shooters in the area."

Residents want to see more enforcement.

Video: Alberta government cracks down on bad behavior on public land

The reeve of Westlock County said there needs to be better co-operation with the province.

"There's always this who owns the land, who has the rights to the land? When a fire happens, who is going to pay for it? Sometimes there's back and forth," Jared Stitsen said.

"We need to get onto the same page of whose responsibility it is to patrol it. There’s a lot of funds being spent to be out here to watch over the area. I think the provincial government has to do their part on that as well."

Area residents also want accountability for the damage and to feel safe in their backyard.

"What I would like to see is the shooting completely shut down. Somebody is going to get killed out here," McNelly said.

Officials want people to respect the Crown land.

"It's not a rifle range. It's not a place where you can bring your household garbage and just leave it for somebody else to pick up," Biro said.

Global News has reached out to the Ministry of Environment and Parks but has not yet heard back in time before publication.

Satellites reveal ocean currents are getting stronger, with potentially significant implications for climate change

 

(Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

Scientists already know the oceans are rapidly warming and sea levels are rising. But that’s not all. Now, thanks to satellite observations, we have three decades’ worth of data on how the speeds of ocean surface currents are also changing over time.

In research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change we detail our findings on how ocean currents have become more energetic over large parts of the ocean.



Ocean currents in the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream carries warm water across the Atlantic Ocean, from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe. All over the ocean we distinctly see circular flow features we call “ocean eddies”. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualisation Studio)

What are ocean eddies?

If you looked down at the ocean from a bird’s eye view, you would see some mesmerising circular motions in the water. These features are called “ocean eddies”. They give the ocean an artistic flavour, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889) shares resemblance with the features we see in ocean circulation, in particular ocean eddies.

Eddies span somewhere between 10 and 100 kilometres across. They’re found all over the oceans. Certain regions, however, are particularly rich in eddies.

These include the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, the Kuroshio Current in the North Pacific, the Southern Ocean which surrounds Antarctica and, closer to Australia, the East Australian Current — made famous by the film Finding Nemo.

Ocean eddies are an integral part of ocean circulation. They move warm and cold waters from one location to others. They mix heat, carbon, salt and nutrients, and affect ocean conditions both regionally and globally.

Satellites constantly watch the ocean

One way we monitor movement on the ocean’s surface is by using specialised, powerful satellites orbiting Earth. Although these satellites are thousands of kilometres above us, they can detect even just a few centimetres of change in the sea’s surface elevation.

Then, through data analysis, we can take the change in sea surface elevation and translate it into ocean flow speeds. This can then tell us how “energetic” an ocean eddy is.

By carefully analysing satellite observations, our team discovered clear changes in the distribution and strength of ocean eddies. And these changes have never been detected before.

Using available data from 1993 until 2020, we analysed changes in the strength of eddies across the globe. We found regions already rich in eddies are getting even richer! And on average, eddies are becoming up to 5% more energetic each decade.

One of the regions we found with the biggest change is the Southern Ocean, where a massive 5% increase per decade was detected in eddy activity. The Southern Ocean is known to be a hotspot for ocean heat uptake and carbon storage.

Until recently, scientists could only observe changes in ocean eddies by using either sparse ocean measurements or the limited satellite record. The satellite record has only just become long enough for experts to draw robust conclusions about the likely longer-term trends of eddy behaviour

Josué Martínez-Moreno gives a three-minute summary of our recent findings.

Why is this important?

Ocean eddies play a profound role in the climate by regulating the mixing and transport of heat, carbon, biota and nutrients in the oceans. Thus, our research may have far-reaching implications for future climate.

Scientists have known for decades that eddies in the Southern Ocean affect the overturning circulation of the ocean. As such, changes of the magnitude observed for eddies could impact the rate at which the ocean draws down heat and carbon.

But eddies are often not taken into account in climate predictions of a warming world. Since they are relatively small, they remain practically “invisible” in current models used to project future climate.

The impact of eddies is therefore either not resolved in climate projections, or is severely underestimated. This is particularly concerning in light of our discovery eddies are becoming more energetic.

Our research emphasises how crucial it is to incorporate ocean eddies into future climate projections. If we don’t, we could be overlooking a critical detail.


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

READ MORE:

Scientists looked at sea levels 125,000 years in the past. The results are terrifying

About the authors


Navid Constantinou
Navid Constantinou is a research fellow, Australian National University.




Adele Morrison
Adele Morrison is a research fellow, Australian National University.




Andrew Kiss
Andrew Kiss is a research fellow, Australian National University.




Andy Hogg
Andy Hogg is a professor, Australian National University.




Josué Martínez Moreno
Josué Martínez Moreno is a P.h.D. candidate, Australian National University.




Matthew England
Matthew England is Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow; Deputy Director of the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC); Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science, UNSW.

ARMENIANS, KURDS, SECULARISTS UNITE AGAINST

'Erdogan, Assassin,' shout French Armenians on genocide anniversary amid security concerns

Issued on: 25/04/2021 - 

France's Armenian diaspora takes to the streets of Paris on the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide on April 24, 2021. © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

Text by: Charlotte WILKINS

France’s Armenian diaspora took to the streets of Paris, Lyon and Marseille on Saturday to commemorate the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide on the heels of a war with Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan and amid fears for their security at home.

Father Gilbert Leonian was fast asleep when they came to burn the church. It was 6am on a Sunday morning in the Paris suburb of Alfortville and he would not be holding a service at the Armenian Protestant church for another few hours. But his wife heard a noise – the sound of a rubbish bin filled with petrol being hurled against the front door – and woke him. By the time he’d opened the window of their first-floor room, directly above the church, it was already lit up by the flames.

“I thought the church had caught fire, that the stairs were on fire, and that we were going to die,” he said.

Luckily for Father Leonian, the flames only blackened the front door of the church. But it was the second attack on his church in a week, coming days after the 2017 visit from the pastor of the Armenian Evangelical Church in Baghdad, and forms part of a growing number of attacks against the Armenian community in France.

“I feel less and less safe in France,” said Veskan,* at a rally in Paris on Saturday to mark the 106th anniversary of the 1915-1918 genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire.

Sevag and Veskan were among those concerned by last year's violence towards the Armenian community in Décines, at a rally in Paris on April 24, 2021. © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

France formally recognised the World War One massacres as a genocide in 2001. In February 2019 French President Emmanuel Macron declared that April 24 – the day in 1915 that the killings of Armenians began – would be a “national day of commemoration”.

More than a century after the massacres, the crowd gathered by a statue of the Armenian composer Komitas in Paris’s affluent eighth arrondissement (district) shouted, "The genocide continues", as they prepared to march along the Seine to the Turkish embassy.

“Erdogan, Assassin,” they chanted amid indignation over the Turkish president’s vehement refusal to recognise the Ottoman Empire's genocide of the Armenians.

Three generations of families, young parents with prams and teenage girls wrapped in the Armenian flag milled around in the bright sunshine ahead of the march. Some carried photos of Armenian resistance heroes; others held banners depicting Erdogan as a devil or a murderer. “Hitlerdogan,” read a banner.

Protesters were indignant at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's refusal to recognise the Armenian genocide, on April 24 2021.

 © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

Last year's conflict over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan was also the cause of grief among protesters.

Anger at Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev has been growing after Armenia suffered a crushing defeat and lost vast swathes of territory. “Aliyev, Erdogan get out of Artsaskh,” read one banner, using another name to refer to the disputed territory.

'Erdogan gives them confidence'

But amid the despair of Armenia’s defeat, and anguish over Azerbaijan’s treatment of up to 300 Armenian political prisoners, there was anxiety over the violence stirred up by Turkish ultra-nationalist militias at home in France.

“It’s terrifying,” said Sabrina Davidian, 39, who carried a banner saying ‘Turkey, get out of Armenia’, “that Turkey’s tentacles can reach as far as France. It’s as if Turkey’s hate campaign against the Armenians never ended."

'It's as if Turkey's hate campaign against the Armenians never ended,' said Sabrina Davidian, 39. © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

Many at the Paris rally were also troubled by attacks last year in Décines, a suburb of the southeastern city of Lyon.

On October 28, as the Nagorno-Karabakh war raged, hundreds of supporters of the Turkish far-right Grey Wolves militia took to the streets of Décines, calling “Death to Armenians".

“Where are the Armenians?” the attackers cried as they marched through the town, wielding iron bars and national flags and shouting pro-Erdogan slogans as they smashed up Armenian shops.

“It’s as if we were in 1930s Germany,” said Veskan’s friend, Sevag,* a wiry, animated third generation Armenian, who like many at the rally asked not to give his full name.

“They would never have dared to do that 10 years ago,” he said in the run-up to the commemoration.

France's Armenian diaspora took to the streets of Paris on the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, on April 24, 2021. © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

“Erdogan gives them confidence, he finances them, the Turkish embassy here is his backyard,” said Sevag, adding that the Armenian community had begun beefing up security at schools and associations, and started using bodyguards.

Sevag was outraged that the ringleader of the attacks in Décines, Ahmet Cetin, 23, who publicly incited violence against Armenians on social media, was given just a six-month suspended sentence and a €1,000 fine.

“Imagine a 16-year-old hearing his words, seeing there’s an Armenian school and thinking, ‘Well I’ll do the job’,” said Sevag.

Tigrane Yegavian, a journalist and researcher at the CF2R (French Intelligence Research Centre) think tank, warned that the flames of an ancient conflict are being instrumentalised in France.

“What’s happening is very dangerous,” he said. “If nothing is done in France – we're practically headed for a civil war,” he said, adding that the Armenians have never had problems integrating anywhere, only in Azerbaijan and Turkey.

“I have nothing against the Turks – nothing,” said the writer Ian Manook, 71, whose latest novel was inspired by his grandmother, who was sold to the Turks as a slave when she was 10.

“We share the same food, the same music … nearly the same dances. I blame the Turkish state … and Erdogan is playing with fire.”

France banned the Grey Wolves in November 2020 but no-one at the rally believed they had melted away.

France's Armenian diaspora took to the streets of Paris on the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide on April 24, 2021. © Charlotte Wilkins, FRANCE 24

“They’re still out there,” said Pierre*, who wore a T-shirt in support of Artsakh, adding that he was followed in December by a car with the Grey Wolves insignia, and that the driver made the Grey Wolves salutation in the rearview mirror.

But amid concerns that France was not doing enough to prevent attacks against Armenians, there was hope that US President Joe Biden’s recognition of the genocide would lead to broader international support for Armenia.

Macron was the only Western leader to acknowledge that Azerbaijan started the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and accused Turkey of sending 2,000 Syrian mercenaries to participate in the fighting, a move he said “which changes the situation”.

But he stopped short of taking a side, facing criticism and protests at home from the Armenian diaspora – which numbers between 400,000-600,000 people – that he didn’t do more to support Yerevan.

“We know that intellectually France is behind us. But France has got a financial relationship with Turkey,” said Sevag, adding that France has got to make its mind up. “Either it’s the country of human rights or it’s the country of money.”

Turnout at the rally, held amid tight security, was lower than last year because of the Covid-19 restrictions in place – France is still officially under its third national lockdown to stem the spread of the virus – but there was no denying the resolve of those gathered.

“The Armenians are not an aggressive people,” said Sevag. “But if we’re going to be massacred even in France, we’ve got to do something.”

*Protesters who asked not to give their surnames

THE BLOB GOES TO SPACE
Meet the 'blobs', French astronaut Thomas Pesquet's unusual space companions


Issued on: 22/04/2021 

A picture taken on October 16, 2019 at the Parc Zoologique de Paris (Paris zoological gardens) shows Petri dishes containing cultures of Physarum Polycephalum, better known as "blob", an unicellular organism capable of learning despite its lack of neurons. © Stéphane de Sakutin, AFP

Text by: Cyrielle CABOT

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet is due to lift off Friday for his second stay aboard the International Space Station. This time around he is taking four "blobs" with him, strange single-celled organisms that are neither plants nor animals nor funghi. The aim is to study how their behaviour in space is affected by microgravity.

During the Alpha mission, which is scheduled to last six months, Pesquet will carry out numerous scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The programme includes observing how astronauts sleep in space, growing a plant, moving an object with an "acoustic clamp" and also taking care of four blobs, the unicellular organisms that have long fascinated the scientific community.

Blob, or physarum polycephalum, its scientific name, is a living species difficult to classify: it is neither animal, plant, nor fungus. Composed of a single cell and several nuclei, it is one of the few unicellular organisms visible to the naked eye and its yellow colour gives it the appearance of an omelette or cheese gratin.

"The blob is fascinating in many ways. It has exceptional abilities," said Audrey Dussutour, research director at the CNRS's Animal Cognition Research Centre, who heads the team overseeing the research into the single-celled organism.

Phenomenal resilience

A blob has no mouth but it can eat. Out in the wild it consumes moss and in the laboratory it feeds on oatmeal. "It can move around. If it is fed, it can also double in size every day," Dussutour told FRANCE 24.

"It is intelligent even though it has no nervous system," she added. "It is capable of learning, memorising but also of transmitting information to its fellow creatures." For example, it can find its way through a maze.

The blob is also extremely resilient, with an extraordinary capacity to withstand all kinds of change. "In the laboratory, under the right conditions, a blob is almost immortal," Dussutour said.

In order to thrive, however, a blob needs to be in a dark, humid environment with access to food. If exposed to too much light or heat, it shrinks, dries out and becomes dormant, though it can live up to several decades in this immobile state. "How to wake it up, then? All you have to do is spray it with water," the scientist explained. "Our oldest blob is 70 years old!”

Once in space, free from Earth’s gravity, how will the unicellular organism react? Without a definitive answer, Dussutour’s team hand-picked four of the most resilient blobs for the trip into space.

"We don't know what will happen," Dussutour said. "We will see how they move, how they feed. Maybe their behaviour will change, instead of growing flat they will gain volume."

"We'll place them in a dormant state for the trip. It is also possible that they will stay that way," she warned. "The effect of weightlessness is the only thing we couldn't test in the lab."

Careful preparation

Before sending the blobs into space, Dussutour and her colleagues had to carry out a whole battery of experiments and tests. "The big challenge was to find a method to sterilise them -- without stressing them -- which is a mandatory step for anything that goes into the ISS," she explained. "We also had to test the effect of the vibrations of the lift-off, select which blobs we were going to send.”

>> French astronaut Thomas Pesquet tells France 24 all about Mission Alpha

A team of specialists was also responsible for making the "blob box", the container in which the organisms will travel. Given the ability of these creatures to squeeze into tiny spaces, it was no easy task. "It was necessary to build a box that would allow them to breathe, while being sure they could not escape," the scientist said.

While on the ISS, the four blobs will be kept inside this box. It will protect them from light so they can be “filmed for a few seconds every ten minutes, so they don’t come to harm”, Dussutour explained.

Pesquet's mission will be to "wake up" the blobs from their dormant state. Over the course of a week, two experiments will then take place: two blobs will be in boxes filled with food while the other two will be deprived of sustenance. According to Dussutour, "this will allow us to observe how they move, how they navigate in space and compare that with their behaviour on Earth".

Educational purposes

Undoubtedly, these experiments will yield additional knowledge about an exceptional species, but their main purpose is educational. Some 2,000 French primary, secondary and high school classes will be given three to five blobs to conduct the same experiments in tandem with those on the space mission. They will be able to then compare their results with those obtained by the ISS. The opportunity could also inspire students to take up their own careers in space.

Dussutour is hoping to compile all the data. "This is a fine example of participatory science," she said. "We are going to have the same experiment 2,000 times. I'm hopeful that this can be used for a scientific paper. And in this way, the pupils will have put themselves in the shoes of a scientist from start to finish, from conducting the experiment through to harnessing the results."

The experiments conducted in space, however, will not lead to any concrete scientific conclusions. "You would have had to send at least ten blobs. That was far too expensive," Dussutour said. "But who knows, if this first experiment is positive, maybe we can send more blobs on a future mission.”

The experiments onboard the ISS and on Earth are scheduled to take place at the end of September.

This article has been translated from the original in French

ExxonMobil investor says its climate strategy an 'existential' risk: report


Issued on: 26/04/2021

ExxonMobil's strategy in the face of climate change poses an "existential business risk" to the company, according to an activist hedge fund ERIC PIERMONT AFP/File

New York (AFP)

ExxonMobil's strategy in the face of climate change poses an "existential business risk" to the company, according to an activist hedge fund that is a shareholder in the oil giant, a report in the Financial Times said Sunday.

The company, which has been criticized over the last year for both its financial performance and its approach to renewable energy investment, "has no credible plan to protect value in an energy transition," hedge fund Engine No. 1 said in an 80-page investor presentation.

ExxonMobil has said its business would focus on carbon capture and storage technology as a means to counter the emissions that cause global warming.

However, it also plans to continue pumping oil and expects to spend $20 to $25 billion per year between 2022 and 2025 to fuel its growth, mainly through new oil and gas exploration projects.

In the document, which will be distributed to other shareholders, the hedge fund criticized ExxonMobil's "value destruction" and "refusal to accept that fossil fuel demand may decline," according to the Financial Times.

Engine No. 1 is campaigning for the oil company to consider alternative energy more seriously.

The document also claims that Exxon's total emissions, including those from the products it sells, will increase by 2025.

World leaders came together virtually this week at the request of US President Joe Biden for a 40-leader climate summit.

Biden doubled US targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change by 2030, with Japan and Canada also raising commitments and the European Union and Britain locking in forceful targets earlier in the week.

The US oil giant, which lost $22 billion in 2020 amid collapsing oil prices, is due to report its first-quarter results on Friday.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

World military spending grows despite pandemic



Issued on: 26/04/2021 - 

The United States increased its military spending for the third year in a row in 2020, after seven years of reductions (pictured: the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group) Erwin Jacob V. MICIANO Navy Office of Information/AFP/File

Stockholm (AFP)

Military expenditure worldwide rose to nearly $2 trillion in 2020, defying the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers said Monday.

Global military spending increased by 2.6 percent to $1,981 billion (about 1,650 billion euros) in 2020, when global GDP shrank 4.4 percent, according to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Diego Lopes da Silva, one of report's authors, told AFP the development was unexpected.


"Because of the pandemic, one would think military spending would decrease," he said.

"But it's possible to conclude with some certainty that Covid-19 did not have a significant impact on global military spending, in 2020 at least," Lopes da Silva said.

He cautioned however that due to the nature of military spending, it could take time for countries "to adapt to the shock".

The fact that military spending continued to increase in a year with an economic downturn meant the "military burden", or the share of military spending out of total GDP, had increased as well.

The overall share rose from 2.2 percent to 2.4 percent, the largest year-on-year increase since the financial crisis of 2009.

As a result, more NATO members hit the Alliance's guideline target of spending at least two percent of GDP on their military, with 12 countries doing so in 2020 compared to nine in 2019.

- Some Covid effects -

There were however indications the pandemic had affected some countries.

Nations such as Chile and South Korea openly decided to reappropriate military funds in response to the pandemic.

"Other countries, such as Brazil and Russia, did not explicitly say this was reallocated because of the pandemic, but they have spent considerably less than their original budget for 2020," Lopes da Silva said.

Another response, as in Hungary for example, was to increase military spending "as part of a stimulus package in response to the pandemic".

Lopes da Silva noted many countries responded to the 2008-2009 economic crisis by adopting austerity measures, but "this time around it might not be the case".

The world's two biggest spenders by far were the US and China, with Washington accounting for 39 percent of overall expenditure and Beijing for 13 percent.

China's military spending has risen in tandem with its growing economy and has seen an increase for 26 consecutive years, reaching an estimated $252 billion in 2020.

The US also increased its spending for the third year in a row in 2020, after seven years of reductions.

"This reflects growing concerns over perceived threats from strategic competitors such as China and Russia, as well as the Trump administration's drive to bolster what it saw as a depleted US military," Alexandra Marksteiner, another author of the report, said in a statement.

Lopes da Silva however noted that the new "Biden administration has not given any indications that it will reduce military spending."

Nonconformist Youn Yuh-jung: S. Korea's first Oscar-winning actress



Issued on: 26/04/2021 - 

Youn Yuh-Jung is South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress 

Chris Pizzello  POOL/AFP

Seoul (AFP)

Septuagenarian Youn Yuh-jung, South Korea's first Oscar-winning actress, has spent decades portraying nonconformist characters, from a vicious heiress to an ageing prostitute, challenging social norms in both career and life.

Her best supporting actress turn in "Minari", a family drama about Korean immigrants in the US, is relatively more conventional: she portrays a playful grandmother to a mischievous young boy trying to adapt to life in rural Arkansas.

The film, written and directed by Korean-American Lee Issac Chung, earned six nominations overall including for best picture, best actor and a nod for Chung


Youn's win is the second Oscars success for a Korean-language film in as many years, after "Parasite" became the first non-English language best picture winner in 2020.

Youn, whose two grown sons are Asian-Americans, had played down excitement over her chance to make history, telling reporters last month: "This is not a playoff game of actors, placing them in order".

And in her acceptance speech on Sunday, she honored her fellow nominees, exclaiming: "How can I win over Glenn Close?"

She had already collected a best supporting actress Screen Actors Guild award -- the first South Korean actress to do so -- and a Bafta for her performance, along with a string of prizes on the festival circuit.

Based on Chung's own experiences growing up in America in the 1980s, "Minari" follows a Korean-born father who moves his family to a mainly white town in rural Arkansas in pursuit of a better life.

It is the latest of several grandmotherly castings for Youn, and "Parasite" director Bong Joon-ho said the role was "the loveliest character Youn has ever played".

The award honours not just "her performance in 'Minari', but the culmination of an illustrious career working with many of the prominent directors in Korea", said Brian Hu, a film professor at San Diego State University.

"The win should be above all a testament to a career honing her craft."

- 'Scarlet letter' -

Over more than 50 years, Youn has often played provocative and atypical characters who do not conform to the rules of socially conservative Korean society.

Born in 1947 in Kaesong -- now in North Korea -- she made her film debut in groundbreaking director Kim Ki-young's "Woman of Fire" (1971), as the live-in maid to a middle-class household who becomes impregnated by the father of the family.

The thriller was a critical and commercial hit -- it remains a classic of the South's modern cinema -- and Youn paid tribute to the late Kim in her speech on Sunday, saying: "I think he would be very happy if he was still alive."

Despite the success of "Woman of Fire," Youn's first heyday came to an abrupt end in 1975, when she married singer Jo Young-nam and the couple moved to the United States.

Youn returned to South Korea in 1984, divorced Jo three years later, and struggled to resume her acting career to support her two children, at a time when divorce carried heavy stigma for Korean women.

"To be divorced was like having the scarlet letter at the time," Youn told a local magazine in 2009.

"There was this thing that dictated women shouldn't make TV appearances so soon after their divorce."

She countered by accepting every role she was offered, however small.

"I worked very hard. I had this mission of somehow feeding my children. I'd say yes even when I was asked to climb 100 stairs," she said.

Fiercely competitive waters' -

By the 1990s, Youn was a regular in television dramas, often portraying mothers, and later grandmothers.

In 2003, Youn made her film comeback in director Im Sang-soo's "A Good Lawyer's Wife", as an unconventional mother-in-law in a dysfunctional family.

She played a cruel and rich heiress betrayed by her husband in Im's 2012 thriller "Taste of Money", and an ageing haenyeo -- the women of Jeju island who free-dive to collect shellfish -- reunited with her long-lost granddaughter in 2016 drama "Canola".

Also in 2016, she was praised for her role in E J-yong's drama "The Bacchus Lady" as an elderly prostitute -- a veteran of the brothels set up for US soldiers in South Korea -- who becomes involved in the deaths of former clients.

Throughout her career, Youn had to navigate the "fiercely competitive waters" of a film industry "largely focused on young and often male talent" for leading roles, explained Jason Bechervaise, a professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber University in Seoul.

Her Oscar win comes at a fraught time for Asian communities in the United States.

Anti-Asian violence has surged in America this year and four of the eight victims of last month's Atlanta spa shootings were women of Korean descent, three of them in their 60s or 70s.

Film professor Hu told AFP that Youn's award was also a "validation for so many grandmothers in Korean-American households, especially at a time when Asian-American elders are seen as victims rather than victors".

© 2021 AFP

French Resistance and Holocaust documentary film Colette vies for an Oscar

Issued on: 25/04/2021 -

Colette Marin-Catherine during her trip to former German concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora with young French historian Lucie Fouble. © ColetteDocShort

Text by: Stéphanie TROUILLARD

French film Colette is up for the best short documentary award at the Oscars on Sunday night. It tells the story of a woman from Normandy who goes on a sort of pilgrimage to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, where her brother was killed during the Second World War, in the company of a young history student.

Tears are running down the cheeks of Colette Marin-Catherine – who turns 92 on April 25, the day of the Oscars ceremony – as she grips the arm of 19-year-old history student Lucie Fouble. They are at Mittelbau-Dora in central Germany. There is not much to see at the site of this former Nazi concentration camp. But the haunting effects of the past are all too present for these two women.

Marin-Catherine’s brother was murdered during the Second World War – one of the 9,000 French people deported to Dora. Fouble was conducting research on his story. The two of them decided to visit the camp together.

This is the backdrop for the short documentary Colette, which is up for an award in that category at the 2021 Oscars.

Colette Marin-Catherine as a teenage girl. © ColetteDocShort

“No one had any idea it’d become so huge!” Marin-Catherine said from her flat in the Norman city Caen a few days before the ceremony. The Oscar nomination has changed her life completely; the phone keeps ringing, journalists keep interviewing her – and she relishes the opportunity to talk about the documentary and the story it elucidates.

‘He had an iron will’

The documentary project started in 2018. American director Anthony Giacchino and French producer Alice Doyard were looking for heroic figures from the Second World War to make a film about. They came across Marin-Catherine in Normandy. She joined the French Resistance as a secondary school pupil.

Her family was deeply patriotic – and she always kept in mind that her grandfather and two uncles were killed in the First World War; as well as that her great-grandfather died in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. “In our family all the men died in wars,” Marin-Catherine put it.

Colette Marin-Catherine and Lucie Fouble near the crematorium at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. © ColetteDocShort

As a teenager during the Occupation she monitored the German soldiers’ comings and goings around Caen for the Resistance, noting the licence plates of their vehicles. Her brother Jean-Pierre, meanwhile, distributed leaflets, stashed weapons and helped Resistance members hide.

In 1943, Jean-Pierre was arrested a few months after he garlanded Great War memorials – a symbolic crime in the eyes of the Nazi occupiers. Sentenced to forced labour, he was initially sent to the Struthoff camp in Alsace, then to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Germany, and finally to Mittelbau-Dora. He died of exhaustion there on March 22, 1945 – 10 days after his 19th birthday.

>> The smile at Auschwitz: Uncovering the story of a young girl in the French Resistance

“He was a good-looking chap – and an athlete to boot,” Marin-Catherine recounted. “He had an iron will as well as great intelligence; he was two years ahead in his studies. It was so terrible to see such a brilliant human being disappear – you can imagine the kind of future he would have had!”

Marin-Catherine vowed never to go to Germany. She didn’t want to take part in what some see as the morbid tourism at the concentration and death camps: “I most certainly wasn’t going to go to Mittelbau-Dora in a coach full of people chatting away to each other.”

But meeting Fouble changed her mind. Giacchino and Doyard put her in touch with this history student – who was working on a biography of Jean-Pierre as part of a book about the French deportees to Mittelbau-Dora. “There was a kind of spontaneous empathy that emerged between her and me; I literally adopted her as my granddaughter,” Marin-Catherine said.

‘I gained a grandmother’

The two filmmakers soon proposed that they take a trip to Mittelbau-Dorn to follow in Jean-Pierre’s footsteps. Marin-Catherine agreed to go with Fouble. “It made me think that it wouldn’t be a tourist trip; it would really be a kind of pilgrimage,” she said. “I never would have done it without this magnificent opportunity the filmmakers gave me. Lucie was a great help to me. Thanks to her, I was able to go and see the exact place where Jean-Pierre died.”

Under the camera’s gaze, the former Resistance member was overwhelmed with emotion as she went to Mittelbau-Dora: “I knew that as soon as I crossed the border that it would change me. It was quite something to hear people speaking German again after all those years; it brought back a lot of memories of the Occupation.”


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The experience also left a deep mark on Fouble. “I’ve had trouble getting over it,” she said. “I remember when we were in the crematorium and Colette told me that was where Jean-Pierre died; she just broke into tears. But it all did so much to help me grow as a human being. In addition to the honour of befriending a former member of the Resistance, I also gained a grandmother.”

“Given my age, it’ll be Lucie who will keep this story’s memory alive,” Marin-Catherine said. “I’ve only got one thing to say to the next generations: Don’t stir up hatred! I see this film as a message of peace.”

She will be watching the Oscars ceremony on television live from her home in Normandy. “I’m 92, so winning an Oscar would hardly change my life. But if I win, I’ll celebrate by doubling my dose of chocolate. Every night, I tend to have a bar – if I win, I’ll start having two!”

Marin-Catherine was especially pleased to note that the Oscars ceremony will take place on her birthday – and Holocaust Remembrance Day: “It’s an exquisite co-incidence!

The promotional poster for the film Colette, nominated for a 2021 Academy Award for best short documentary. © ColetteDocShort

Researchers say the T Rex walked about the same speed as a person

Shane McGlaun - Apr 24, 2021,

One of the most famous dinosaurs is the Tyrannosaurus Rex, more commonly known as the T. Rex. Movies featuring the dinosaur lead us to believe that the dinosaur was very fast, but it appears that isn’t true. A new study recently published by researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has found that the T. Rex was about as fast as a human when it comes to walking speed.

The researchers believe that the ferocious dinosaur walked at a speed of about three miles per hour. To reach their conclusion, scientists analyzed the hip height, mass, and stride length of the dinosaur and researched its tail and how it may have carried its tail while walking. Researchers found that as the dinosaur walked, its tail would’ve moved up and down while passively suspended in the air.

The researchers used an adult T. Rex specimen named “Trix” and reconstructed the bone and ligament structure of its tail. The walking speed was determined by combining that information with what is known about step frequency and step length. Researchers on the project are clear that their research doesn’t answer all the questions about the T. Rex.

The team points out that gate reconstruction of dinosaurs has multiple inherent uncertainties. The team says it’s important to compare results from different methods to find a converging point. Researchers also point out that while the tail of the T. Rex may have slowed it down when walking, it could’ve helped it go faster when it ran.

Waters says judge in Chauvin trial who criticized her protest remarks was 'angry' and 'frustrated'

By Kelly Mena, CNN
 Sat April 24, 2021

(CNN)Rep. Maxine Waters on Saturday called the judge overseeing former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's trial in the death of George Floyd "angry" and "frustrated" in response to his recent criticism that her comments at a protest could be grounds for appealing a verdict.

"I think he was angry. I think he may be frustrated with this case and how much world publicity is on it and all of that," Waters told CNN's Jim Acosta on "Newsroom."

Waters, last weekend, ahead of a verdict in the case, had called for protesters to "stay on the street" and "get more confrontational" if Chauvin were acquitted in Floyd's killing, comments immediately seized on by Republicans who claimed that Waters was inciting violence. The California Democrat said she was in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, to show her support for protesters amid ongoing protests over the police killing of Daunte Wright and to also support his family.

After closing arguments in Chauvin's trial the following Monday, Judge Peter Cahill rejected a defense request for a mistrial over the publicity of the case, including TV shows and comments by Waters. Chauvin was eventually found guilty on Tuesday of all three charges against him, including second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The jurors deliberated for more than 10 hours over two days before coming to their decision.


"I talked with a lot of legal scholars and lawyers and of course he was way off track. He knows that in fact, the jurors were not in the room. The jurors had an oath not to look at television, not to read the newspapers, not to engage with people on this. So he knows that there was no interference with the jurors," added Waters defending her comments.
"[T]o say that I'm going to cause an appeal really is not credible. And whether or not they have an appeal, even if they mention my name, like the judge says, my comments don't matter anyway," Waters noted.

Congresswoman says she receives death threats often

The congresswoman, pressed by Acosta on her recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, then went on to say that she receives death threats often.

In the piece, Waters says: "Now, because of who I am, the right wing and members of Congress who subscribe to the views of groups like QAnon, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the KKK have targeted me."

When asked whether she believes the Republican members of Congress referenced in her piece are non-violent, Waters responded with: "Well no, what is very interesting is I am threatened to be killed very often and so we are reporting to the Capitol Police and they are investigating all these attempts to kill me -- not attempts, but people who are calling in saying that they are going to kill me."

CNN has reached out to the US Capitol Police for comment.

Additionally, in the op-ed the congresswoman defends herself as being "nonviolent" and slams critics of her protest remarks calling it a "blatant distortion of the truth." She defended herself again on Saturday.

"So when you talk about violence, and you look at them and their alignment and you look at what happened January 6 when the domestic terrorists -- who are their friends -- broke into our Capitol and beat up police officers and caused one police death, and others to be harmed ... then I think people whether they like me or not will know their arguments are not credible," Water said.