Sunday, October 17, 2021

Quebec nurses refuse mandatory overtime this weekend as pandemic adds to pressure

Nurses' union issues Nov. 15 deadline to ban practice

 altogether


Josh Grant · CBC News · 
Thousands of nurses across Quebec are refusing to work any mandatory overtime this weekend, as their union ramps up the pressure on provincial and regional health authorities to stop forcing health-care workers to stay past their scheduled shift. (CBC / Radio-Canada)

Quebec's largest nurses' union says health-care workers are beyond exhausted as they continue to feel the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic and that the use of mandatory overtime to cover staffing shortages must end.

The Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) says that's why more than 30,000 of its members in a dozen regions, including Montreal, are refusing to work extra hours this weekend.

On Friday, the union sent formal notices to local and provincial health authorities informing them of this weekend's plans. It also issued a deadline of Nov. 15 to ban the practice of forced overtime entirely or face action from the FIQ.

"We never know what time we are going to leave work," said Patrick Guay, vice-president of the FIQ's department of labour relations.

"It has an impact on our families, it has an impact on the overall [health] network.... There's no more patience. It's over."

WATCH | Quebec nurses refuse to work overtime this weekend:

Quebec's largest nurses' union is increasing its fight against mandatory overtime, as more than 30,000 of its members across the province are refusing to work extra hours this weekend. 1:56

The nurses' union says it's reached out to Quebec's workplace safety board and asked it to intervene. It also asked the province's human rights commission to study the issue.

The FIQ says the "inhumanity of such a system" puts the health and safety of both nurses and patients at risk and is also causing psychological damage to employees.

"We need to end this management style," Guay said. "There are other ways to provide service than forcing people to work."

Patrick Guay, vice-president of labour relations for the FIQ, says nurses and health-care workers are too exhausted to be forced to stay at work longer than their scheduled shifts. He says mandatory overtime is dangerous for both employees and patients. (Radio-Canada)

'There's no magic wand,' health minister says

Health Minister Christian Dubé agrees that mandatory overtime isn't sustainable, but he says getting rid of it isn't something that can happen overnight.

"It's addressed in the collective agreement," Dubé said on Friday, referring to an agreement in principle between Quebec and the FIQ that was signed on Oct. 6.

"We don't want any more mandatory overtime ... but there's no magic wand," he said.

"We're not going to be able to go from five, six, seven per cent usage of mandatory overtime in certain regions to zero tomorrow morning. It's not possible."

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé says that next week, he hopes to present concrete measures to improve working conditions in the health-care system — measures he hopes will convince more nurses to come out of retirement, encourage part-time employees to agree to full-time work and attract new hires. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Dubé said the province's plan to address the personnel crisis is a work in progress, and mandatory overtime was a management tactic used well before the pandemic.

He said that next week, he hopes to present concrete measures to improve working conditions in the health-care system — measures he hopes will convince more nurses to come out of retirement, encourage part-time employees to agree to full-time work and attract new hires.

Dubé said nurses want to see a culture change on the job and that he's committed to making that happen.

Quebec's Health Ministry says almost 1,800 nurses have been hired, have come back to work or have moved to full-time positions in the last few weeks. The ministry says it's in discussions with close to 2,400 other potential candidates.

But the nurses' union says the government's recruitment efforts haven't yielded any results when it comes to eliminating mandatory overtime. It says it will be rolling out the next steps of its plan to see the practice banned in the coming 

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Arctic coast road, deep sea port project back in motion with $7.25M loan agreement

Project would see a 227-kilometre road and a deep-sea port at Grays Bay

Jane George · CBC News · 
At the 2020 annual general meeting of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. in Cambridge Bay, delegates approve an interest-free loan of $7.25 million to the Grays Bay Road and Port project. The Kitikmeot Inuit Association has now officially decided to incur that loan. (Government of Nunavut)

The Grays Bay Road and Port project in Nunavut is now back in motion after being bogged down for nearly two years by COVID-19 and financial constraints due to surging construction costs. 

The Kitikmeot Inuit Association (KIA), which heads the project, plans to take on a 10-year $7.25 million loan from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), the territory's Inuit organization.

"We're ready to proceed," said Stanley Anablak, the president of the KIA, an Inuit regional association that represents Inuit in western Nunavut. 

The project would see an all-weather, 227-kilometre road running northwards from the Jericho mine near the Northwest Territories border at the northern end of the Tibbitt-Contwoyto winter road, to Grays Bay on the Arctic Coast. It would also have a deep-sea port at Grays Bay on Coronation Gulf.

 The project would bring a lower cost of living, cheaper power and improved telecommunications to the Kitikmeot region.

The Kitikmeot association said it did an independent review of the business case for the project to gauge its viability before accepting the loan. It then asked the delegates at its recent AGM in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, to approve the loan, who did in a unanimous vote. The KIA wanted a grant from NTI, meaning they wouldn't have to repay it, but instead was only offered to burrow the funds.

The loan agreement, which covers 25 per cent of what's needed to get it shovel-ready, should be signed by the end of the month, Anablak said.

The association received a financial commitment from the federal government to cover the remaining 75 per cent of the pre-construction costs needed of up to $21.6 million.

The project would see an all-weather, 227-kilometre road running northwards from the Jericho mine, near the Northwest Territories border at the northern end of the Tibbitt-Contwoyto winter road, to Grays Bay on the Arctic Coast. It would also have a deep-sea port at Grays Bay. (CBC)

Combined the federal grant and the loan from NTI will  help make the western Arctic road and deep-sea port project ready for an environmental assessment from the federal and territorial reviewers.

The loan from NTI is set to be given in two instalments, with the first $4 million handed to KIA within 30 days of signing the loan agreement.

The second part of the loan would be provided within 10 days of the KIA putting in place "certain financial management measures." The agreement says the whole loan has to be repaid by March 31, 2032.

Hiring project manager the 1st step

The first move in that three-year process, Anablak said, will be to hire a project manager.

The project — which the KIA took over from the Nunavut Resource Corp. in 2020 — was initially taged at $550 million total.

But rising construction costs have since skyrocketed, Anablak said.

"COVID has put a big burden on us so we've been holding off the last 19 months on this project," he said. "Once we hire a project manager, that will be one of his jobs, costing this out."

After that, the task will be to find investors. 

"We've always dreamed of power lines, and internet. We hope the government will step in and make use of our access to connect us," Anablak said.

Linking up with the N.W.T.

Meanwhile, in the N.W.T., Yellowknives Dene First Nation plan to move forward with their $1.1-billion Slave Geological Province Corridor project, which would link up with the Gray's Bay Road.

The Slave Geological Province Corridor would see a 413-kilometres all-season road constructed northeast of Yellowknife to the western Nunavut border.

In August 2019, the federal government announced it would put up $30 million, and the N.W.T. government would contribute another $10 million to support environmental regulatory reviews and planning studies for that project.

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SPACE WEATHER
Massive asteroids will whiz past Earth in coming weeks, including 1 nearly size of Empire State Building

NASA has tracked over 27,000 near-Earth objects, some over 1 kilometer in size.

ByMarlene Lenthang
16 October 2021

Asteroid bigger than the great pyramid of Giza to zoom by Earth Friday
The asteroid is one of many so-called near-Earth objects passing in the coming weeks.Science Photo Library/Getty Images

Several massive asteroids are expected to whiz close to Earth in the coming weeks, including one nearly the size of the Empire State Building.

Two are expected to soar near the planet on Saturday, followed by more in the coming days, according to data from NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies.


On Friday, Asteroid 2021 SM3, which has a diameter of up to 525 feet -- bigger than the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt -- was projected to zoom by around 3.5 million miles away from Earth, USA Today first reported based off CNEOS data.

Near-Earth objects are defined by NASA as "comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighborhood."

But fear not, though these asteroids are passing relatively close to Earth, they're still a great distance away, experts say.

"Astronomically, these are coming close to the Earth. But in human terms, they are millions of miles away and can get no closer than millions of miles away," Paul Chodas, the director of the CNEOS at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, told ABC News.

The center tracks near-Earth objects for the entire asteroid community so that when close approaches happen astronomers can know where and when and observe their movements.

One of the closest approaches is Asteroid 2021 TJ15, which will pass the Earth at the same distance at the moon, or 238,854 miles away, on Saturday.

"That asteroid has a diameter of 5.6 to 13 meters (18 to 42 feet). That's a tiny asteroid coming to about the distance of the moon. It's still a long, long way, it can't hit the Earth, there's no chance of that," Chodas said.

Asteroid 2004 UE is up to 1,246 feet, nearly the size of the Empire State Building, that will make its close approach Nov. 13 about 2.6 million miles from Earth.

"So that is the size of a small building. That's approaching a medium size. But that's 11 lunar distances approaching sequence, it cannot get any closer than 11.11 lunar distances," Chodas said.

The center has discovered and tracked over 27,000 near-Earth objects. Asteroids range in size with most being small-, medium-size asteroids ranging from 300 meters to 600 meters (984 feet to 1,968 feet) in size and large ones 1 kilometer (3,280 feet) and up in size. He said many of the asteroids that pass Earth are tiny and burn up when they enter the planet's atmosphere.

Unlike the apocalyptic plots in movies, the chances of a massive astroid striking the planet is extremely rare, Chodas said.

"It's simply the fact that there are very fewer medium- and large-size asteroids that come near the Earth to begin with," he said. "There are comparatively few large asteroids. The largest near-Earth asteroid is something like 10 kilometers. But there's only one or two of those."

The asteroids are discovered through observatories, cameras, telescopes and asteroid surveys that search the night sky for movement. After an asteroid is discovered, the center tracks their measurements and locations, and computes an orbit trajectory to predict its future movements to see if there's any chance it'll intersect with Earth.

Just how often do asteroids end up hitting Earth?

"Over the last 20 years of doing this, we've had a total of four asteroids -- tiny, tiny asteroids -- that have been observed in space and headed for the Earth, and have impacted the atmosphere and burned up. They became a bright fireball in each case," Chodas said. "In two of the cases, we've predicted where they would hit ahead of time and predicted where to find the meteorites. Expeditions have gone out and found the meteorites. So our mathematics work pretty well."

One of the most prominent was the Chelyabinsk Event in Russia in February 2013.

"That was the largest observed impact we've had in recent memory, I guess it's a 100-kind of year event. That was a 20-meter asteroid that blazed through the atmosphere over Russia, and it disintegrated. What was started off as a 20-meter asteroid ended up as a core rock that was only one meter across, and it landed in a frozen lake and made a nice round hole in the ice," Chodas said.

So far this year, the biggest asteroid to pass by Earth was Asteroid 2001 FO32, dubbed Apophis the "God of Chaos", in March which was estimated to be 1,100 feet across, NASA said.

Michael Zolensky, an astromaterial curator and researcher at NASA, told ABC News asteroids are " basically leftovers from planet formation."

"Some of them have been whacked and broken by impacts from the other asteroids and then have kind of come back together again, as sort of traveling beanbags of loose rubble," he said.

On Saturday, NASA's newest asteroid probe named Lucy took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 12-year mission to study some asteroids known as Trojans around Jupiter.

Lucy will be the first spacecraft to visit these asteroids with the hopes of helping scientists learn more about how our solar system's planets formed and how they ended up in their current configuration, NASA said in a release.
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NASA rover mission is 'exactly where Australia wants to be' to build space industry

Oct 16, 2021


Sky News Australia

An Australian-made rover is set to be launched to the Moon as part of a NASA space mission this decade after the federal government struck an agreement with the US space agency. The deal could see a semi-autonomous rover made by Australian businesses and researchers sent on a lunar mission as early as 2026. 

ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says the partnership is an incredible achievement for Australia. “When we talk about moon rovers, that’s a really exclusive club, only five countries – four countries rather – have attempted rovers. Only three have gotten them to work,” he told Sky News Australia. 

“There’s actually only I think been seven rovers in total, this would be number eight, we would be the fourth country.” Dr Tucker said this is “exactly where you want to be” in terms of space production for Australia. he added if the nation succeeds in the project, it would put us in the same league as the United States, Russia, and China. Dr Tucker said it is “not just about the moon rover” but developing skills, capabilities, and investment in companies and researchers to help grow the space program

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Perseverance rover captures stunning panoramic image of Mars’s South Séítah

By Georgina Torbet
DIGITAL TRENNDS
October 16, 2021

Like any good tourist, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been snapping photos as it explores the wilderness of Mars. Now, NASA has released a stunning panoramic view of the Martian surface, composed of pictures taken by the rover.
Cropped version of a mosaic composed of 84 pictures taken by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

The image shows the South Séítah area of the Jezero Crater, where the Perseverance rover is currently exploring and searching for signs of ancient life. This region is of particular interest because it contains some of the oldest rocks in Jezero, allowing researchers to get a view into Mars’s past.s


The complete image is an incredible mosaic, stitched together from 84 separate images taken using the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. These images were taken on September 12 after Perseverance had completed its longest drive to date, traveling 175 meters. To get the full effect of the stunning view of Mars, head over to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s website to see the high-definition version.This image indicates the location of several prominent geologic features visible in a mosaic composed of 84 pictures taken by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

“Just like any excited tourist approaching the end of a major road trip, we stopped at a lookout to get a first view of our destination,” said Jorge Núñez, an astrobiologist and planetary scientist on the Perseverance team, in a statement. “This panorama is spectacular because you feel like you are there. It shows not only the incredible scale of the area, but also all the exploration possibilities South Séítah has to offer. With multiple intriguing rocky outcrops and ridgelines, each one is seemingly better than the last. If it’s not a field geologist’s dream, it’s pretty close.”

The image shows the different colors and textures of rocks that the rover has encountered, which geologists can analyze to understand more about Mars and its history.

“Another cool thing about this image is that one can also see in the background, on the right, the path Perseverance took as it made its way to South Séítah,” said Núñez. “And finally, there is the peak of ‘Santa Cruz’ far in the distance. We’re currently not planning on going there; it’s too far out of our way. But it is geologically interesting, reinforcing just how much great stuff the team gets to pick and choose from here at Jezero. It also looks cool.”

My Favorite Martian Image: the ridges of ‘South Séítah’
This annotated image indicates the location of several prominent geologic features visible 
in a mosaic comp
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Strange Radio Signals Are Coming From The Milky Way. Study Tells What They Are Suggesting

Astronomers have detected unusual radio signals coming from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, which exhibit very high polarisation, and suggest a new class of stellar object


By: Radifah Kabir | Updated : 16 Oct 2021 

Representational image (Source: Getty)


New Delhi: Strange radio signals are coming from the direction of the Milky Way Galaxy's centre, astronomers have discovered. Scientists have studied the patterns of variable radio sources for a long time, but the new radio waves detected do not match any of those previously known patterns.

The astronomers believe these unusual signals could suggest a new class of stellar object.

The study explaining the discovery of the object was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) radio telescope, Ziteng Wang, the lead author of the new study and PhD student in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, along with an international team of scientists, detected these surprising signals emerging from deep in the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy.




What is unusual about this signal?

Ziteng Wang said what the scientists found most strange about the new signal is its “very high polarisation”, according to a statement by the University of Sydney.

“This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time,” he explained. In simple words, polarisation is a property of light waves that depicts the direction of their oscillations.

The study author also noted that this was a never-seen-before phenomenon. A dramatic variation in the brightness of the object was observed, and the signal switched on and off at random, he said, adding that the brightness increased or decreased by a factor of 100 during those episodes.

In order to find out the secrets of the universe, variable or transient objects in radio waves are being studied. Variable objects in astronomy are those stellar objects which change brightness, or in other words, emit variable light across the electromagnetic spectrum. Transients are astronomical phenomena which can last for durations of fractions of a second to weeks or years. Variables are detectable at any point of time, while transients fall below the detectable limit due to their short-lived nature.

Some examples of astronomical objects whose brightness varies are pulsars, supernovae, flaring stars, and fast radio bursts.

Pulsars are rotating neutron stars, or a dense spinning dead star, which emit pulses of radiation at very regular intervals, which may range from milliseconds to seconds.

Supernova is the explosion of a star, while fast radio bursts are highly intense bursts of radio waves produced by unidentified sources, which last for a few milliseconds.

Flare Stars are variable stars which exhibit dramatic variations in brightness, within a few minutes.

Ziteng Wang said that they initially speculated the unusual signals to come from a pulsar, which is a very dense type of spinning dead star. He said they also speculated the signal to come from a star that emits huge solar waves.

But they later shrugged off these assumptions because the newly discovered signals did not match the signals that are expected to be emitted by pulsars or other types of celestial objects known.



What are the findings?

Ziteng Wang, along with scientists from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, and from countries like Germany, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Spain and France, discovered the unusual object using CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia. They subsequently conducted further observations using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory's MeerKAT telescope.

Professor Tara Murphy, from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, and the School of Physics, said they had been surveying the sky throughout 2020 and 2021 to detect new objects using ASKAP. Variables and Slow Transients (VAST) is the name of the project.

She added that they named the newly detected unusual object after its coordinates as ASKAP J173608.2-321635. This object, coming from the centre of the galaxy, is unique because it was invisible in the beginning, then turned bright, faded away and then reappeared, she explained. She noted that the behaviour exhibited by the object was extraordinary.

Over nine months in 2020, the researchers had detected six radio signals from the object. They tried to find the object in visible light, but it was in vain. Then, they tried to detect the source using the Parkes radio telescope, but were unsuccessful at their attempts.

Murphy explained that the signal was intermittent (occured at irregular intervals), which is why they observed it for 15 minutes every few weeks, using the more sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, in the hope of seeing the signal again.

Fortunately, she added, the signal did return, but it exhibited a behaviour that was dramatically different. In previous ASKAP observations, the signal had lasted for weeks, but this time, the source disappeared in a single day, she said.

The scientists note that not much is revealed about the secrets of the universe from this discovery.

Ziteng Wang's co-supervisor, Professor David Kaplan from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said the new discovery had some parallels with another emerging class of mysterious objects known as Galactic Centre Radio Transients (GCRTs), one of which was dubbed the 'cosmic burper'.

Galactic Centre Radio Transients are not one specific object but a group of objects emitting radio waves, around the Milky Way's centre.

Astronomers speculate that the signals could be coming from GCRTs, because the new object shares some properties with this class of mysterious objects. Kaplan said there were also certain differences between the properties of the new object and GCRTs. "And we don't really understand those sources, anyway, so this adds to the mystery," Kaplan was quoted as saying.

The researchers aim to observe the object closely as it may provide further clues about its identity.

Professor Murphy said astronomers will be able to take sensitive maps of the sky every day using the transcontinental Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, which is being planned to be built in Australia and South Africa. She explained that this powerful telescope will not only help astronomers solve mysteries such as the latest tantalising discovery, but will also further exploration in the radio spectrum of the cosmos.




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Gap in research funding leaves global south more vulnerable to climate impacts, studies suggest

Inayat Singh, Alice Hopton 
© Themba Hadebe/The Associated Press 
A shepherd stands in the dry riverbed at Colesberg, South Africa, in September. Researchers are warning that without detailed climate impact research, countries in Africa and around the global south may be left

Developing countries suffer from a significant gap in terms of scientific research related to climate change, a new study shows, even though they contain the communities and people most vulnerable to extreme weather, rising sea levels and other serious impacts of climate change.

"There is a kind of gap in knowledge, specifically in peer-reviewed papers in the large literature databases about those areas," said Max Callaghan, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin.

"We know that there are kind of inequalities in this global scientific system in terms of resources."

The stark divide in availability of scientific research has been on the radar of climate experts, with major barriers facing global south scientists, such as access to prestigious (and expensive) scientific journals, the lack of time and funding to work on research, and even onerous visa requirements that make it difficult for scientists to attend conferences and meetings in the global north.

Experts warn that the gap might leave developing countries without the means to identify where climate mitigation and adaptation efforts should be directed to prepare for future weather disasters. Good climate science is also needed so that aid money from rich countries to help poor countries address climate change is targeted and spent on the right projects

.
© Denis Farrell/The Associated Press 
Demonstrators show their placards during a climate change protest in South Africa in 2019. Even with relatively little funding for climate science, researchers already know that much of Africa is facing climate change impacts.

Machine learning maps climate impacts

The new study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, used machine learning to examine over 100,000 scientific papers worldwide. The study was conceived as a way to see if machine learning could help the work of the UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by making it easier to examine and analyze the thousands of paper scientists currently examine by hand.

The study authors divided the world into smaller grid cells, and calculated the number of climate studies that studied climate impacts in those areas.

They found far more climate studies had been published on impacts in developed countries than developing countries.

For example, nearly 30,000 studies looked at areas in North America. Only 10,000 studies looked at Africa, which has more than double the population.

The researchers then used precipitation and temperature data to determine whether a particular area was experiencing climate change caused by human activity. They found that while three quarters of Africans lived in areas experiencing climate change impacts, only 22 percent of those lived in areas with high levels of scientific research on those impacts.

Canada funding research in global south

A Canadian government agency is working to address this research gap. The International Development Research Centre, a federal crown corporation, funds and promotes scientific research in the global south and has offices in countries like Uruguay, Senegal and India.

In 2019-2020, new projects totalling $166.4 million were funded by the IDRC and its associated donors. The centre puts out calls for proposals for international development research that achieves specific goals, such as climate change adaptation. Researchers and institutions can apply, with the money going to local researchers or collaborations.

Bruce Currie-Alder, the program leader for climate resilience at the IDRC, says while there have been years of conceptual thinking over climate change adaptation, we now need to implement those concepts here in Canada, and everywhere else seeing climate impacts. That's where local climate science becomes very important, to figure out how exactly a particular region needs to adapt.

"It's one thing to say the world is getting warmer. There are certain parts that are drier, there are certain frequency of storms," he said.

"What does that mean in a particular district or state? And that knowledge is absolutely essential."

Barriers facing African researchers

The stark divide in climate science was highlighted by another paper published in September and partly funded by the IDRC that examined funding for research in Africa. It found that a paltry 3.8 per cent of global funding for climate change research is spent on Africa.

Even when it is, the money mostly goes to researchers from the global north. For example, of that small amount of funding for research in Africa, 78 percent went to institutions in Europe and North America. Only 14.5 per cent went to African institutions.

© Nardus Engelbrecht/AP Photo
 Massive waves break on the Sea Point promenade in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2020. Countries in the global south also contain the communities most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

Christopher Trisos, a South African co-author of the paper and senior researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative in Cape Town, says the solution lies not just in increasing funding to African researchers, but also improving the quality of funding.

"For example, increasing direct access and direct control of research, design and resources for African partners when working with researchers from places like Canada or the United States, as opposed to research agendas being set externally," he said.

Trisos also pointed out that African researchers face barriers even trying to access published papers, many of which are in journals behind online paywalls that might be beyond their budgets.

"So publishing more data open access and more scientific publications open access is a big part of the solution there as well," he said.

The paper said that these funding disparities lead to "unequal power dynamics in how climate change research agendas on Africa are shaped by research institutions in Europe and the USA."

One outcome from this is that researchers in developed countries may frame research questions and objectives for a global north audience, rather than provide actionable insights for their local partners to use that research to fight climate change in Africa, the paper warns.

Indigenous knowledge needs to be included

Michele Leone is a senior program specialist at the IDRC's offices in Dakar, Senegal. He is currently working on an IDRC-funded project that examines migration in the region and how it relates to climate and environmental changes on water sources and agricultural productivity.

Leone welcomed the machine learning study but pointed out that the technological method it used is an example of the resource divide between global north and south scientists.

"There is the risk of a kind of a new global divide," he said, "with the rapid, exponentially fast development of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that have been developed in the north with northern ideas, with northern datasets and northern bias."

Trisos says that it's also important to consider who is regarded as an expert. There are multiple barriers to research that intersect with ethnicity and gender, he says, that hold back certain people and certain forms of knowledge.

"Thankfully, within institutions like the IPCC that has begun to change the authorship, teams are becoming more diverse," Trisos said.

"There's also much more appreciation of not just scientific knowledge, but Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge as holding valuable histories on how people in places are being impacted by climate change."

Even without as much research in the global south, it's clear climate change is affecting people.

"I think it's telling that even with that very small amount of funding and research effort, there are still really strong signals of severe climate change impacts on people's health, on their food security, on the biodiversity in Africa," Trisos said.

"But we would know a lot more if more resources were allocated to the problem."
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Macron and the ‘French Trump’ trap Gaullism’s heirs in a political vice


With just months to go before presidential polls, the centre-right Les Républicains, under pressure from both flanks, are scrambling for a suitable candidate

Les Républicains’ prospects have been boosted by Xavier Bertrand’s decision to run. Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images


Kim Willsher in Paris
THE GUARDIAN
Sun 17 Oct 2021 

Six months before a presidential election and France’s mainstream right finds itself squeezed – between the hammer and the anvil as they say here – without a candidate and facing an existential threat from either side.

On one flank are the far-right Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, a polarising television pundit who wants to talk about immigration, identity and Islam – the three i’s – and ban “non-French” names such as Mohamed.

On the other is Emmanuel Macron, a self-declared “centrist” president who, nearing the end of a five-year mandate marked by the Covid epidemic, needs to woo centre-right voters to stay in power.

As Zemmour, who has been nicknamed the French Trump, dominates the airwaves hammering home his message, polls suggest if he stands either he or Le Pen will be facing Macron in the second round run-off.

Where does this leave the mainstream Les Républicains (LR), the traditional heirs of General de Gaulle and his “certain idea of France”, now faced with Zemmour’s accusations it has betrayed its hero and become a party of chochottes or French “snowflakes”?

In previous years, the centre right has put on a show of unity, however fragile, in presidential races. In 2017, after a fiercely contested primary, the party rallied behind François Fillon, a shoo-in as the next president until historical scandals caught up with him.

Far-right candidate Éric Zemmour is challenging the position of Marine Le Pen. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Macron came from nowhere with his “neither right nor left” mantra, siphoned votes from both mainstream parties and destroyed the political alternance that had seen the Parti Socialiste (PS) or the centre-right party take power.

Five years on, the PS candidate, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, is trailing badly in the polls, while LR is engaged in a frantic race against the electoral clock to paper over the cracks before next April. A poll of LR’s 80,000 members has been postponed until 4 December, giving the winner four months to rally the electorate.

Jean-Yves Camus, director at the Observatoire des Radicalités Politiques of the leftwing Jean-Jaurès foundation, told the Observer: “For decades in France the right has given the image of unity but behind this are old fractures. In Les Républicains there are people who are true Gaullists and those who are conservative, even reactionary, but are with the LR because it’s a big party, has a hegemony on the right and because it’s complicated to be elsewhere.”

He added: “Zemmour’s possible candidacy has revealed this disparity of very different ideology inside LR and made it more evident. He has shown the unity is fictitious and made this fiction explode.”

Political scientist Pascal Perrineau, former director of the Sciences Po centre for political research who oversaw a recent LR study on rightwing and centrist voters’ expectations, said LR “remains traumatised by the 2017 presidential election and weakened by its divisions”.

“The problem is not that it has no leaders, it is that it has too many, and none are naturally imposing themselves,” he told L’Obs magazine. “The right has an electorate. It controls the majority of the main cities, departments and regions in France, but LR remains a party weakened and traumatised by the Fillon episode.”

The party, he added, was “struggling to have its political project heard a few months before the election”.

Last week LR’s hopes were boosted when the popular ex-minister, Xavier Bertrand, seen as the conservative right’s best chance, announced he would participate in the party vote after months of vowing to go it alone. Bertrand and his closest LR rival Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France (Paris region) council, who are largely unknown outside of France, are also facing a challenge from Michel Barnier, the EU Brexit negotiator.

But the “Zemmour meteor” is highlighting LR fault lines between moderate small-c conservatives like Bertrand and Pécresse, who would prefer to drag the discourse back to economic and social issues, and those like Barnier and former Fillon acolyte Éric Ciotti, following Zemmour down the populist path.

Île-de-France region’s president Valerie Pécresse, another of LR’s hopefuls. 
Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

Political analysts agree immigration is an issue that concerns the French and has to be addressed, but Le Pen and Zemmour are not the only ones pulling towards the hard right on the issue. Barnier has promised an “authority electroshock”, including a moratorium on immigration and a restricted role for European courts, and the “politics of patriotism”.

There are currently 40 candidates of every political hue in the presidential race – although not all will be still standing by April – but the pre-campaign of the last few weeks has been fought almost exclusively on hard-right issues.

Debates have centred on Zemmour’s provocative Trump-like declarations that Islam and immigration are destroying France, his defence of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime and scattergun attacks on feminists, homosexuals, black people and Arabs, sparking introspective, existential reflections. Even France Inter’s morning news programme, the equivalent of Radio 4’s Today, was moved to debate: “Is the identity of France threatened? What does it mean to be French?” last week.

The saturation coverage Zemmour has been given is unprecedented and described by Hidalgo as “nauseating”. Romain Herreros, a political correspondent at the Huffington Post, believes Zemmour’s goal is to kill off LR and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) by presenting himself as the mythical “providential man” bridging the political terrain between the far-right and centre and halting the national decline he has highlighted; the classic firefighter-pyromaniac, starting fires in order to heroically put them out.

“He wants to destroy them both, but his weak point is this ignorance of the daily lives and worries of French people, an area in which LR can pick up support,” Herreros said.

He added that Zemmour’s “obsession” with the three i’s may ultimately be his undoing. “Zemmour is very intelligent but his approach to questions of immigration, integration, cultural values is almost an obsession. Of course there are French who worry about immigration and think the ‘France first’ approach is good, but polls show their main worry is over more day-to-day issues like their spending power,” he said.


Michel Barnier: why is the EU’s former Brexit chief negotiator sounding like a Eurosceptic?

Polls show Macron with a clear lead in the first-round vote, with Le Pen and Zemmour up to 10 points behind. Hidalgo, officially selected to represent the PS last Thursday, trails Yannick Jadot of Europe Écologie Les Verts (Europe Ecology/Greens) and the hard left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed).

LR must win back the voters it lost to Macron five years ago to get anywhere near the second round – the same voters Macron, who has yet to declare his candidacy, will also court.

Perrineau says LR must “reconquer its traditional electorate” if it is to exist, a warning echoed by Etienne Criqui, professor of political science at Nancy university. “If LR doesn’t make the second round next April, the party will explode,” he said. “LR ticks all the elements of a predicted defeat.”

In the run-up to the 4 December vote, Christian Jacob, president of LR group in the national assembly, is urging party members to hold their nerve against the “Zemmour menace”. “We have to be calm and determined and keep our sang froid,” he told them.
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Tens of thousands demonstrate in Rome against fascism

The protest comes a week after extreme right-wing supporters broke into the headquarters of Italy’s oldest labour confederation.
Thousands of people gathered in San Giovanni Square, Rome, to say no to fascism [Enrico Mattia Del Punta/Getty Images]

AL JAZEERA
16 Oct 2021

Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered in Rome to demonstrate against fascism, a week after right-wing extremists forced their way into the headquarters of Italy’s oldest labour confederation.

The head of the CGIL labour union, Maurizio Landini, led the protest on Saturday under the slogan: “Never again fascism.”

“It is necessary to build an anti-fascist, democratic network for the whole continent,” Landini said. “Democracy cannot be exported through wars, but by giving access to work and rights.”

More than 50,000 people attended the rally in Piazza San Giovanni, according to media reports. Among the attendants were Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

Some participants waved slogans in favour of coronavirus vaccines, a direct retort to the protesters armed with sticks and metal bars who trashed CGIL’s Rome headquarters on October 9.

Last week’s demonstration began as a peaceful protest against new government regulations imposing Europe’s most stringent vaccine requirements.

The measure, which came into effect on Friday, mandates proof of vaccination, a negative test within 48 hours or proof of having recovered from COVID-19 to access places of employment.

An unauthorised march broke off from the main rally in Piazza Del Popolo and attempted to reach Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office.

Among them were proponents of extreme right-wing group Forza Nuova, who waved the Italian flag and extended their arm in a ‘Roman’ Fascist salute.A demonstrator holds a banner that reads ‘Freedom’ during a protest against the ‘Green Pass’ in Rome, Italy [Remo Casilli/Reuters]

The group reached CGIL’s headquarters and briefly broke into its premises. The confederation blamed the act of violence on “fascist action squads”.

“[This was] an attack on democracy and on the world of work that we are determined to repel,” Landini said at the time. “No one should think they can take our country back to the Fascist years.”

Addressing the crowd on Saturday, Landini made reference to the round-up of Jews that occurred in Rome’s Jewish ghetto on October 16, 1945, saying that a return to political violence would not be tolerated.

“Being anti-fascist means guaranteeing democracy for all and safeguarding the principles of our constitution,” he said.

Landini also used the platform to demand truth and justice for Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old PhD student killed in Cairo in 2016.

The trial in absentia against four Egyptian security officers was suspended earlier this week, due to concerns that the defendants might be unaware of the charges against them.

The decision of a Rome court to nullify the proceeding frustrated years of efforts to investigate the events that led to the student’s disappearance in Egypt and bring closure to the victim’s family.

Italy's unions rally against neo-fascist groups after violent protests

REUTERS
Publishing date:
Oct 16, 2021 • 

ROME — Italy’s biggest workers’ unions rallied in Rome on Saturday and called on the government to dissolve the neo-fascist groups involved in last weekend’s violent protests against the COVID-19 health pass.

Last week, police arrested 12 people, including leaders of the extreme right-wing group Forza Nuova, after thousands took to the streets to oppose mandatory ‘green passes’ for all workers.

Some groups broke through police lines to reach the prime minister’s office, while others smashed their way into the headquarters of Italy’s largest trade union, CGIL.

Many of those attending Saturday’s rally waved CGIL’s red flag as they marched from an area close to the city’s main station to the central square of San Giovanni on a crisp, sunny afternoon.

Italy’s main unions CGIL, CISL and UIL all called on the government to dissolve neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups at the rally whose slogan was “No to fascism and violence, yes to work, safety and rights.”

“We ask for concrete acts, not just chatter. It is time for the state to demonstrate its democratic strength in enforcing the laws and the constitution,” CGIL’s Secretary General Maurizio Landini said from the stage.

“A country that loses its memory cannot have a future,” he added.

Organizers estimated between 50,000 and 60,000 people took part. CISL head Pierpaolo Bombadieri said participation was as high as 100,000.

“Stay away from our head offices, stay away from the squares,” Bombardiere said, referring to last week’s violent protests.

Last week’s riots drew widespread condemnation, including from Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, the leaders of the rightist League and Brothers of Italy parties, respectively.

Two Forza Nuova leaders remain in custody after a decision by a judge. (Reporting by Giulia Segreti, additional reporting by Jaime Lopez, editing by Christina Fincher)



  • Demonstrators take part in a march organized by Italy's main labor unions, in Rome's St. John Lateran square, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021. The march was called a week after protesters, armed with sticks and metal bars, smashed their way into the headquarters of CGIL, a left-leaning union, and trashed its office, during a demonstration to protest a government rule requiring COVID-19 vaccines or negative tests for workers to enter their offices. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Tens of thousands demonstrate in Rome against neo-fascists

The Associated Press
 Saturday, October 16, 2021 

ROME -- Tens of thousands of union members and other Italians gathered in Rome to stand up against rising fascism Saturday, a week after right-wing extremists forced their way into the headquarters of Italy's most powerful labor confederation while protesting a COVID-19 certification requirement for workplaces.

The head of the CGIL union confederation, Maurizio Landini, led the protest with other labor leaders under the slogan: "Never again fascism." Organizers put the crowd assembled in front of St. John Lateran basilica for the protest at 100,000-strong,

Some participants waved flags reading "Si Vax," a direct retort to the protesters armed with sticks and metal bars who trashed CGIL's Rome headquarters on Oct. 9.

They were protesting a government requirement, which took effect Friday, mandating proof of vaccination, a negative test within 48 hours or proof of having recovered from COVID-19 to access places of employment.

Landini, CGIL's secretary general, has compared the assault on the union headquarters to 1921 attacks by the newly founded Fascist party against union organizers.

Fascist leader Benito Mussolini came to power the next year and later brought Italy into World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany.

Landini said Saturday's event was intended as "a demonstration that defends democracy for everyone. This is the topic."

The head of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CISL) trade union, Luigi Sbarra, said an attack against unions led by the far-right Forza Nuova party "made the only choice to be here, united against all types of fascism." He called for the swift dissolution of the party by Italian authorities.


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Thousands marched in Rome Saturday, one week after right-wing extremists rallied against COVID-19 certification requirement for workplaces.
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Dancing bees reveal that U.K. cities offer more accessible food than the countryside

Researchers tapped into honeybees' waggle dances to map out where they've been

CBC Radio · 
A bee hovers next to flowers in St James's Park in central London. A new study shows that bees in urban environments have an easier time finding food than those that live in agricultural areas, primarily because of the diversity of flowers in gardens and parks. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images)

By watching honeybees dance for their hive mates, researchers have discovered that bees in some of the U.K.'s agricultural areas have to travel much farther than their urban counterparts to feed.

When honeybees return to the hive from foraging, they do a series of movements, called a waggle dance, to convey to their fellow bees where to find nectar.

"If the run is very long, that means the food is far away. And if it's short, the food is quite close. But that angle of the run relative to the top of the hive also tells the other bees about which direction they should fly in," Elli Leadbeater, author of the study and a professor of ecology and evolution at the Royal Holloway University of London, told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald.

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Decoding the waggle

First decoded by Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch in the 1920s, this dance involves the bees moving repeatedly in a figure eight pattern, wagging their rear end in the middle.

"I think it's amazing that these tiny creatures have such a sophisticated communication system," said Leadbeater. "We can capitalize on that, and we can translate their dances so that we can build maps of where they've actually been."

When honeybees return from foraging, they do a 'waggle dance' for the other bees in the hive to communicate where they found food. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Leadbeater and her team recorded videos of honeybees dancing at 10 hives in downtown London, England, and 10 hives in agricultural areas around the city, capturing a total of 2,827 waggle dances.

The team found that bees in urban areas had an average foraging distance of 492 metres, compared to bees in agricultural areas that had an average foraging distance of 743 metres. 

Urban gardens better for bees than agriculture monocrops

The results were not what Leadbeater was expecting.

"We were quite surprised because we found that even though the urban areas are somewhere that you would think of as a kind of concrete jungle — and we were really looking in the very centre of London, so it is very concrete — we found that the bees were actually finding it easier to find food there than they were in the agricultural land," said Leadbeater.

She points to urban gardens and parks, which often have a variety of flowers that bloom year-round, as being hotspots for the bees. However, in agricultural areas, where only one type of crop dominates a large area, bees may not be able to find food as easily.

"Those crops are only there for a small amount of time and then they're gone. So it's a bit of a boom and bust scenario. We don't have the kind of diversity of forage that that we used to have, where we would have wildflowers, we'd have flowering hedgerows," said Leadbeater. "Bees need weeds. They need those flowers. They're a really important source of forage for them."

Beekeeper and Chairman of The London Beekeepers Association John Chapple installs a new bee hive on an urban rooftop garden in London, England. Rooftop gardens such as this are helping urban bees amidst the 'concrete jungle' of a big city. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Her goal with this research was to understand the challenges bees are facing in different ecosystems.

"The aim behind this study was really to kind of use honeybees as a tool for surveying the landscape for other social bees, such as bumblebees, which often visit the same type of flowers as honeybees. We can say this is probably generally true for bumblebees as well, and those wild bees are the ones that we're looking to protect."

The solution, suggests Leadbeater, is encouraging farmers to allow a diversity of flowering plants around the edges of their fields.

"We've seen that gardens, which are very diverse and varied, are really good for bees, and we could look at trying to turn the countryside into something that's a little bit more similar to them," she said.

Produced and written by Amanda Buckiewicz.

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