'Like pushing a rock': NGOs decry uphill battle for legitimacy in Greece



Refugee aid groups in Greece complain of the difficulties they face in joining the mandatory NGO registry (AFP/ANGELOS TZORTZINIS)

John HADOULIS
Mon, December 20, 2021

Raging seas, pitiless hours and now red tape. Refugee aid groups in Greece, some with years of experience in the field, say trying to get onto the government's mandatory NGO registry is nothing short of an uphill struggle.

"You bring one (document), they ask for something else," said a source involved in the process, who asked not to be identified.

"It's like Sisyphus pushing up the rock," the source added, referring to the mythical ancient king condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill.

A number of organisations with a years-long record of helping asylum seekers now face a "hostile" environment in Greece, while several newcomer groups are essentially waved through, the source told AFP.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis -- which is seeking to discourage migration -- set new registry requirements in February 2020 after an initial database was established by the previous leftist administration.

It says it has a duty to vet all organisations and staff coming into close daily contact with vulnerable people for possible crimes, including sexual abuse and drug trafficking.

But the rejection of veteran aid groups and the impact for those they seek to help has raised concerns including beyond Greece's borders.

- 'Taking back control' -

With Greece a key gateway for migrants into Europe, the government has bolstered border patrols, tightened asylum laws and curtailed refugee benefits.

Athens also assumed responsibility for EU-funded programmes previously run by the UN refugee agency.

"We have taken back control," Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said last week.

In September, a new law also made it illegal for charities to undertake rescues at sea, unless they work in close conjunction with the coastguard or the coastguard is absent from the area and approves the operation.

Failure to comply carries a fine of at least 500 euros ($565) per participant, at least 3,000 euros for the organisation and a minimum prison sentence of up to a year.

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic warned that the law "would seriously hinder the life-saving work carried out at sea by NGOs, and their human rights monitoring capacities in the Aegean."

In November, some two dozen humanitarian activists went on trial on the Greek island of Lesbos for helping migrants reach the island three years ago.

Greece has faced persistent accusations that it illegally repels migrants at sea, which it has steadfastly denied.

- 'Same rules for all' -

In a letter to Mijatovic, the Greek ministers of migration, maritime policy and citizens' protection insisted that the register "does not aim to set obstacles to NGOs" and entry requirements "are in no way excessive or complicated."

"The aim is to set the same rules for all NGOs active in Greece," they said.

Among the organisations whose application has been rejected is Equal Rights Beyond Borders, a Greek-German group which says it is currently helping more than 400 people with family reunification and asylum claims.

And Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) was told it was not eligible for the registry because it gives legal advice to people slated for deportation.

RSA told AFP it had provided over 60 documents and paid nearly 15,000 euros in legal and ISO certification fees over the last two years.

Both groups are trying to overturn the decision at Greece's top administrative court, the Council of State, which is due to examine their case in June.

Earlier this month, 19 aid groups -- including several already on the registry -- said RSA's exclusion for helping migrants under deportation set a "major negative precedent" and "shamed" Greece.

UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor, likewise, called the move "worrying".

"Everyone is entitled to the protection of international human rights law, including those facing deportation," she tweeted.

- 'Opportunistic' -

But concern has also been raised about groups that have won registry approval.

The opposition Syriza and Kinal parties have tabled three parliamentary questions about HopeTen, a civil society organisation whose induction into the registry in October 2020 took less than a month.

Previously a lobby group formed to organise municipal events before changing hands, HopeTen now says it works for the social welfare and protection of vulnerable people.

Other agencies added to the register are contracted to work on migration projects -- some still lacking essentials such as a functioning website or recent tax audits -- including a theatrical events group and a municipal car park company.

Syriza, which was in government until mid-2019, has accused the migration ministry of enabling "opportunistic" use of EU funding for a migration programme by groups "lacking adequate expertise".

The ministry did not respond to AFP questions on the issue.

jph/kjm/ach

UN-backed investigator into possible Yemen war crimes targeted by spyware

Exclusive: Analysis of Kamel Jendoubi’s mobile phone reveals he was targeted in August 2019

Tunisian Kamel Jendoubi chaired the now defunct Group of Eminent Experts in Yemen – a panel mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
THE GUARDIAN
Mon 20 Dec 2021

The mobile phone of a UN-backed investigator who was examining possible war crimes in Yemen was targeted with spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group, a new forensic analysis of the device has revealed.

Kamel Jendoubi, a Tunisian who served as the chairman of the now defunct Group of Eminent Experts in Yemen (GEE)– a panel mandated by the UN to investigate possible war crimes – was targeted in August 2019, according to an analysis of his mobile phone by experts at Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

The targeting is claimed to have occurred just weeks before Jendoubi and his panel of experts released a damning report which concluded that the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war had committed “serious violations of international humanitarian law” that could lead to “criminal responsibility for war crimes”.

Jendoubi’s mobile number also appears on a leaked database at the heart of the Pegasus Project, an investigation into NSO by the Guardian and other media outlets, which was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, the French non-profit media group.

The leaked list contained numbers of individuals who were believed to have been selected as potential surveillance targets by NSO’s government clients.

‘We need free speech’: protests erupt across Poland over controversial media bill


The bill, yet to be signed into law, would tighten rules around foreign ownership of media

Protesters march in Krakow on Sunday to demand Poland’s head of state veto a law they say would limit media freedoms in the country. 

Photograph: Alex Bona/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock


Guardian staff with agencies
Mon 20 Dec 2021 02.29 GMT

Poles have staged nationwide protests including a thousands-strong rally outside the presidential palace to demand the head of state veto a law they say would limit media freedoms in the European Union’s largest eastern member.

Unexpectedly rushed through parliament on Friday, the legislation would tighten rules around foreign ownership of media, specifically affecting the ability of news channel TVN24, owned by US media company Discovery Inc, to operate.

The bill, yet to be signed into law by president Andrzej Duda, has soured ties between Nato-member state Poland and the United States at a time of heightened tension in eastern Europe amid what some countries see as increased Russian assertiveness.


Poland angers US by rushing through media law amid concerns over press freedom

It has also fuelled wider fears about attacks on media freedoms that have been running high since state-run oil company PKN Orlen said last year it was taking over a German-owned publisher of regional newspapers.

“This is not just about one channel,” the Warsaw mayor and a former opposition candidate for president, Rafal Trzaskowski, told the crowd on Sunday. “In a moment [there will be] censorship of the internet, an attempt to extinguish all independent sources of information – but we will not allow that to happen.”

At demonstrations outside the president’s palace, 38-year-old Emilia Zlotinska told Agence France-Press: “We need free speech. I would like the president not to sign it.”

TVN24 footage showed protesters in Warsaw waving Polish and EU flags and chanting “free media”.

Thousands of people attended protests at the Main Square in Krakow.

 Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

“We have to be here today because free media are a pillar of democracy,” said Beata Laciak, a member of the crowd and a sociology professor.

Demonstrations took place across the country. Pictures from the southern city of Krakow showed protesters brandishing banners with slogans like “Hands off TVN” and “Free Poland, free people, free media”.

As of 8.20pm local time, more than 1.5 million people had signed a petition in TVN24’s defence, the channel said.


Polish parliament passes controversial new media ownership bill

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long said that foreign media groups have too much power in the country and distort public debate.

Critics say the moves against foreign media groups are part of an increasingly authoritarian agenda that has put Warsaw at loggerheads with Brussels over LGBT rights and judicial reforms.

Last week, the US state department called on Duda to protect free speech, freedom to engage in economic activity, property rights and equal treatment.

“The United States is deeply troubled by the passage in Poland today of a law that would undermine freedom of expression, weaken media freedom and erode foreign investors confidence in their property rights and the sanctity of contracts in Poland,” state department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on Friday.

The European Commission said the new law sent another negative signal about the respect of rule of law and democratic values in Poland.

“Once this bill becomes a law, the commission will not hesitate to take action in case of non-compliance with EU law,” commission vice-president Vera Jourova said in a statement.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

AP Exclusive: Polish opposition duo hacked with NSO spyware
By FRANK BAJAK and VANESSA GERA 

In this two-picture combo, Polish lawyer Roman Giertych, left, poses for a portrait in Rome, and Polish prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek, right, is photographed in Warsaw, on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. The hacking of their phones are the first two confirmed cases of Pegasus military grade spyware being used against targets in Poland, where an illiberal government is eroding democratic norms. 

(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, left, Czarek Czarek Sokolowski)


WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The aggressive cellphone break-ins of a high-profile lawyer representing top Polish opposition figures came in the final weeks of pivotal 2019 parliamentary elections. Two years later, a prosecutor challenging attempts by the populist right-wing government to purge the judiciary had her smartphone hacked.

In both instances, the invader was military-grade spyware from NSO Group, the Israeli hack-for-hire outfit that the U.S. government recently blacklisted, say digital sleuths of the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab internet watchdog.

Citizen Lab could not say who ordered the hacks and NSO does not identify its clients, beyond saying it works only with legitimate government agencies vetted by Israel’s Defense Ministry. But both victims believe Poland’s increasingly illiberal government is responsible.

A Polish state security spokesman, Stanislaw Zaryn, would neither confirm nor deny whether the government ordered the hacks or is an NSO customer.

Lawyer Roman Giertych and prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek join a list of government critics worldwide whose phones have been hacked using the company’s Pegasus product. The spyware turns a phone into an eavesdropping device and lets its operators remotely siphon off everything from messages to contacts. Confirmed victims have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists, heads of state and Uganda-based U.S. diplomats.

But word of the Poland hacking is especially notable, coming as rights groups are demanding an EU-wide ban on the spyware. The 27-nation European Union has tightened export restrictions on spyware, but critics complain that abuse of it by EU member states urgently needs to be addressed.

Citizen Lab previously detected multiple infections in Poland dating from November 2017, though it didn’t identify individual victims then. The Pegasus spyware has also been linked to Hungary, which like Poland has been denounced for anti-democratic abuses. Germany and Spain are reportedly among NSO’s customers, with Catalan separatists accusing Madrid of targeting them with Pegasus.

“Once you start aggressively targeting with Pegasus, you’ll join a fraternity of dictators and autocrats who use it against their enemies and that certainly has no place in the EU,” said senior researcher John-Scott Railton of Citizen Lab.

Former EU parliament member Marietje Schaake of the Netherlands, now international cyber policy director at Stanford University, said: “The EU cannot credibly condemn human rights violations in the rest of the world while turning a blind eye to problems at home.”

The Polish targets see the hack as evidence of a perilous erosion of democracy in the very nation where Soviet hegemony began unraveling four decades ago.

Just hours before Zaryn answered emailed questions about the hack from The Associated Press, a provincial prosecutor filed a motion seeking the arrest of Giertych, the lawyer, in a financial crimes investigation.

Zaryn did not comment on whether the two matters might be related. He said Poland conducts surveillance only after obtaining court orders.

“Suggestions that Polish services use operational methods for political struggle are unjustified,” Zaryn said.

An NSO spokesperson said Monday that the company is a “software provider, the company does not operate the technology nor is the company privy to who the targets are and to the data collected by the customers.” Citizen Lab and Amnesty International researchers say, however, that NSO appears to maintain the infection infrastructure.

The company spokesperson also called the allegations of Polish misuse of Pegasus unclear: “Once a democratic country lawfully, following due process, uses tools to investigate a person suspected in committing a crime, this would not be considered a misuse of such tools by any means.”

In July an investigation by a global media consortium found Pegasus was used in Hungary to hack at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and several journalists. Last month, a Hungarian governing party official acknowledged that the government had purchased Pegasus licenses.

In 2019, independent Polish broadcaster TVN found evidence the government anti-corruption agency spent more than $8 million on phone spyware. The agency denied the report but Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was more ambiguous, saying all would “be clarified in due time.”

In the last four months of 2019, Giertych was hacked at least 18 times, Citizen Lab found. At the time, he was representing former Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Civic Platform, now head of the largest opposition party, and former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, now a European Parliament member.

The “jaw-droppingly aggressive” tempo and intensity of the targeting — day-by-day, even hour-by-hour — suggested “a desperate desire to monitor his communications,” Scott-Railton said. It was so unrelenting that the iPhone became useless and Giertych abandoned it.

“This phone was with me in my bedroom and it was with me when I went to confession. They scanned my life totally,” he said.

Most of the hacks occurred just ahead of an Oct. 13, 2019, parliamentary election that the Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski won by a slim margin, leading to a further erosion of judicial independence and press freedom.

Giertych was also involved representing an Austrian developer at the time who claimed that Kaczynski, Poland’s most powerful politician, stiffed him as a deal to build twin business towers in Warsaw fell apart. Revelations of that deal-gone-sour triggered a scandal because Polish law bans political parties from profit — and the towers were to be built on land owned by Kaczynski’s party.

Giertych also represented Sikorski in an illegal w iretapping case in which the former foreign minister’s conversations were recorded and published; Sikorski alleges the government failed to investigate the possible involvement of Kaczynski allies. Last year, anti-corruption officials searched Giertych’s home and office in a manner a Polish court deemed illegal and the EU called emblematic of how Poland’s government treats hostile lawyers in politically sensitive cases.

When the Lublin regional prosecutor applied for a court order Monday seeking Giertych’s arrest, it said the lawyer had refused to appear for questioning, and seemed to be “deliberately hiding from justice.”

Giertych called this absurd and said the financial wrongdoing investigation was trumped-up, that a Poznan court had already dismissed it for lack of evidence. Prosecutors say he is suspected of money laundering for legal fees he received in a Warsaw property dispute case a decade ago.

Citizen Lab was still investigating how Giertych’s phone was infected but said it expects a “zero-click” vulnerability, which wouldn’t involve user interaction. They believe Wrzosek was similarly hacked. Citizen Lab found six intrusions on her phone from June 24-Aug. 19.

Last year, Wrzosek ordered an investigation into whether presidential elections should be postponed over concerns they could threaten the health of voters and election workers. Almost immediately, she was stripped of the case and transferred to the distant provincial city of Srem with two days’ notice.

“I didn’t even know where the city was and I had nowhere to live there,” said Wrzosek, who was hacked shortly after returning to Warsaw and resuming media appearances critical of the government.

A vocal member of an independent prosecutors’ association, Wrzosek learned she’d been hacked — and tweeted about it -- when Apple sent out alerts last month to scores of iPhone users across the globe targeted by NSO’s Pegasus, including 11 U.S. State Department employees in Uganda. In a lawsuit it filed the same day, Apple called NSO “amoral 21-century mercenaries.” In 2019, Facebook sued the Israeli firm for allegedly hacking its globally popular WhatsApp messenger app.

Wrzosek has filed an official complaint but doesn’t expect prompt accountability, believing “the same services that tried to break into my phone will now be conducting the proceedings, looking for perpetrators.”

___

Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.

B.C. Mounties say they are monitoring protest against gas pipeline

HOUSTON, B.C. — The RCMP say they are investigating allegations that protesters threatened security officials, set off flares and damaged vehicles at a drill site for the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern British Columbia

.

 Provided by The Canadian Press

The Mounties say in a statement released Monday that officers were called to the site along a forest service road near Houston on Sunday.

They say anyone blocking worker access to the area is in breach of a court-ordered injunction.

Opposition to the pipeline project among Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs sparked rallies and rail blockades across Canada last year.

The elected council of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation and others in the area have approved the pipeline, which would transport natural gas from Dawson Creek to Kitimat.

A statement from a group called the Gidimt'en Checkpoint says an area known as Coyote Camp has been reoccupied and an eviction notice that was issued to the company by the hereditary chiefs last year has been enforced.

Members of the Gidimt'en clan, one of five in the Wet'suwet'en Nation, had re-established blockades last month before several people were arrested while protesting construction of the 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2021.

Two U.S. senators seek probe into Amazon.com labor practices

(Reuters) -U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Sherrod Brown on Monday asked the Labor Department for a full investigation into Amazon.com Inc's labor practices.

Reuters/PASCAL ROSSIGNOL FILE PHOTO: 

The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics centre in Boves

Rubio, a Republican, and Brown, a Democrat who chairs the Banking Committee, wrote in a letter that about "one out of every 170 U.S. workers is an Amazon employee, underscoring our particular interest in ensuring that the company's employment practices are fair, and in accordance with the law. We urge you to use every mechanism at your disposal to investigate Amazon's labor and employment practices immediately."

The lawmakers noted that the National Labor Relations Board had found that Amazon wrongfully terminated a worker who complained about unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic as well as two others who criticized Amazon's practices.

The board also ordered a re-run of an election by workers who voted not to unionize because Amazon's actions "made a free and fair election impossible."

This month, the lawmakers said, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it would investigate the deaths of six people which occurred when an Amazon warehouse in Illinois collapsed during a tornado.

"Amazon workers have voiced concerns regarding the company’s alleged lack of emergency response training, stringent cellphone policies, and expectations that workers continue to work during tornado warnings," the lawmakers said in the letter.

Amazon.com and the Labor Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Diane BartzEditing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Quebec Liquor Corp. warehouse staff OK deal; restocking shelves will take few weeks

The Canadian Press

Saturday, December 18, 2021 

Alcohol products are shown at an SAQ outlet in Montreal, Tuesday, December 7, 2021. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

MONTREAL -- Quebec's liquor corporation says its warehouse workers have ratified a new contract, but it will be a few weeks more before store shelves are full again.

Union members voted 86.3 per cent in favour of the offer, with voting held in Quebec City and Montreal over the past two days.

Catherine Dagenais, the liquor corporation's chief executive officer, says in a statement the approval of the deal allows it to focus on restocking its own 400 outlets and those of business partners, but it will take a few more weeks until things return to normal.

Related Stories
Second try: new agreement in principle for SAQ workers will go to vote this weekend
Quebec microdistilleries threatened by low sales due to SAQ labour dispute
SAQ warehouse employees overwhelmingly reject deal for new contract

The new deal comes after a few strike days that led to depleted shelves and delivery days, as well as the rejection of an initial agreement reached on Nov. 29.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees says in a statement it agreed to a six-year contract that provides three per cent yearly wage increase. The employees also agreed to a new work arrangement that will permit warehouses to remain open on the weekend.

Wages, overtime and the precarious status of employees had been the main sticking points in negotiations with the union representing the Crown corporation's 800 warehouse and delivery employees.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Dec. 18, 2021.

WATER IS LIFE MNI WISCONI

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water in Martian Canyon System

Dec 17, 2021 by News Staff / Source

Planetary researchers using the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument onboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have found evidence for very high content of hydrogen in the soil — the mean water equivalent hydrogen value as large as 40.3 wt% — in Candor Chaos, central part of Valles Marineris.

Mars; the center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

“With TGO we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface — and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” said Dr. Igor Mitrofanov, a researcher at the Space Research Institute.

“FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water.”

Dr. Mitrofanov and his colleagues analyzed FREND data obtained from May 2018 to February 2021, which mapped the hydrogen content of Mars’ soil by detecting neutrons rather than light.

“Neutrons are produced when highly energetic particles known as ‘galactic cosmic rays’ strike Mars, drier soils emit more neutrons than wetter ones, and so we can deduce how much water is in a soil by looking at the neutrons it emits,” said Dr. Alexey Malakhov, also from the Space Research Institute.

“FREND’s unique observing technique brings far higher spatial resolution than previous measurements of this type, enabling us to now see water features that weren’t spotted before.”

“We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected.”

“This is very much like Earth’s permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures.”

“This water could be in the form of ice, or water that is chemically bound to other minerals in the soil.”

“However, other observations tell us that minerals seen in this part of Mars typically contain only a few percent water, much less than is evidenced by these new observations.”

Valles Marineris can be seen stretching across this frame, overlaid by colored shading representing the amount of water mixed into the uppermost meter of soil (ranging from low amounts in orange-red to high in purple-blue tones, as measured by TGO’s FREND instrument). The colored scale at the bottom of the frame shows the amount of ‘water-equivalent hydrogen’ (WEH) by weight (wt%). As reflected on these scales, the purple contours in the center of this figure show the most water-rich region. In the area marked with a ‘C,’ up to 40% of the near-surface material appears to be composed of water (by weight). The area marked ‘C’ is about the size of the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, part of the canyon system considered promising in our hunt for water on Mars. The underlying gray shading in this image represents surface topography, and is based on data from the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MGS/MOLA). The axes around the frame show location (latitude and longitude) on Mars. Image credit: Mitrofanov et al., doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114805

“Overall, we think this water more likely exists in the form of ice,” he said.

“Water ice usually evaporates in this region of Mars due to the temperature and pressure conditions near the equator.”

“The same applies to chemically bound water: the right combination of temperature, pressure and hydration must be there to keep minerals from losing water.”

“This suggests that some special, as-yet-unclear mix of conditions must be present in Valles Marineris to preserve the water — or that it is somehow being replenished.”

“This finding is an amazing first step, but we need more observations to know for sure what form of water we’re dealing with,” said Dr. Håkan Svedhem, a researcher at ESA’s ESTEC.

“Regardless of the outcome, the finding demonstrates the unrivalled abilities of TGO’s instruments in enabling us to ‘see’ below Mars’ surface — and reveals a large, not-too-deep, easily exploitable reservoir of water in this region of Mars.”

The findings appear in the journal Icarus.

_____

I. Mitrofanov et al. 2022. The evidence for unusually high hydrogen abundances in the central part of Valles Marineris on Mars. Icarus 374: 114805; doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114805

 “Significant Amounts of Water”

 Discovered on Mars

ByThomas Kissel

December 19, 2021

A significant amount of water has been discovered in a “Grand Canyon” like area of Mars. Credit: NASA

Scientists announced on Wednesday that they have discovered “significant amounts of water” in the Valles Marineris on Mars.

The discovery was made by an orbiter traveling around the planet, called the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The orbiter was launched in 2016 as part of a mission conducted by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos.

The orbiter discovered the water in Valles Marineris, an extensive canyon system on the red planet that is 10 times longer, five times deeper, and 20 times wider than the Grand Canyon in the United States.

The water was detected by the orbiters FREND, or Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector. The discovery came as something of a surprise as Mars’s water is typically found in its polar regions in the form of ice, but his canyon system is situated south of the red planet’s equator, where temperatures are too high for water ice to exist.

A study describing the discovery was published on Wednesday in the journal Icarus.

“With (the Trace Gas Orbiter) we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface — and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” said study author Igor Mitrofanov in a statement.

“FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water.”

Study shows that Mars’s landscape was formed by ancient water

A study of images from Mars shows that ancient water that once existed on the surface of Mars shaped the landscape of the planet, according to an announcement made in October.

Photographs of the Jezero crater show that the geography of the Red Planet was affected by the movement of water billions of years ago; the new evidence collected by the rover will help in the ongoing search for any evidence of life on the planet, according to the study, which was published yesterday in the journal Science.

The Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero crater back in February, beaming images of its descent all the way down to the surface of the planet and giving renewed hope to researchers who have tasked themselves with finding traces of life on the planet. The new research is a result of the study of the images it took during its first three months on the planet.

Now, because of photographs taken recently by the Rover, scientists can see just how a now-vanished river once entered into a lake, laying down sediment in the typical delta pattern that is visible from just above the planet.

Cliffs that once formed the high banks along the delta are shown in the high-resolution images; even their layers from sedimentation are visible in the new photos.

Colossal 'Fossil' Structures Have Been Detected Lurking on The Outskirts of Our Galaxy

All-sky map of the Milky Way, showing the large-scale disk structures in the midplane. (Laporte et al.)

MICHELLE STARR

18 DECEMBER 2021

From Earth's vantage point in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms, the structure of our galaxy is pretty difficult to reconstruct.

That's because gauging the distance to something in space when you don't know its intrinsic brightness is really, really hard. And there are a lot of objects in the Milky Way whose brightness is unknown to us. This means that sometimes, we can totally miss huge structures that you'd think should be right under our nose

A new set of such enormous structures has now been unveiled at the outer regions of the Milky Way disk: massive, spinning filaments with unclear provenance. Astronomers will be conducting follow-up surveys to try and solve the mystery.

The discovery came about thanks to the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory, a project to map the Milky Way in three dimensions with the highest precision yet.

Gaia orbits the Sun with Earth, in a looping orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point, a gravitationally stable pocket of space created by the interactions between the two bodies.

From there, it carefully studies stars in the Milky Way over an extended period, watching to see how the positions of stars seem to change against more distant stars. This provides a parallax, which can be used to calculate the distances to the stars.

While this can be done from here on Earth, atmospheric effects can interfere with the measurements. From its position in space, Gaia has an advantage, which it has been using to great effect. Since its 2013 deployment, the space telescope's data have revealed a number of structures and stellar associations we had no idea about.

The new structures were identified by a team led by astronomer Chervin Laporte of the University of Barcelona in Spain in data from the latest release, made in December of last year, with improved parallax precisions. The same data also showed previously known structures with much higher clarity than we'd seen before.

"We report the discovery of multiple previously undetected new filaments embedded in the outer disk in highly extincted regions," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"Some of these structures are interpreted as excited outer disk material, kicked up by satellite impacts and currently undergoing phase-mixing ('feathers'). Due to the long timescale in the outer disk regions, these structures can stay coherent in configuration space over several billion years."

Such spinning filaments at the galaxy's outskirts are not unexpected. According to simulations, interactions between the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies could produce such structures. The Milky Way has a swarm of satellites currently in orbit (maybe).

But there's a problem: the sheer number of the filaments found by Laporte and his colleagues vastly supersedes those seen in such simulations, which means we need another explanation.

One possibility is that the filaments are remnants of tidal spiral arms that were excited at various times by interactions with satellites; galactic fossils, in other words.

Another possibility is that they are the crests of distortions of the Milky Way disk which occurred due to collisions with other galaxies. The Milky Way has a history of collisions with other galaxies, which can cause perturbations in the galactic disk, so it's not an unreasonable supposition.

Such collisions, the researchers believe, could send disturbances propagating through the galactic disk like ripples on a pond.

The next step will be to conduct follow-up observations, to try and determine which of these scenarios is the most likely.

"Typically this region of the Milky Way has remained poorly explored due to the intervening dust which severely obscures most of the galactic midplane," Laporte said.

"While dust affects the luminosity of a star, its motion remains unaffected. We were certainly very excited to see that the Gaia motions data helped us uncover these filamentary structures! Now the challenge remains to figure what these things exactly are, how they came to be, why in such large numbers, and what they can tell us about the Milky Way, its formation and evolution."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

Stunning close-up reveals secrets of Milky Way's neighbour

by Australian National University

Credit: CSIRO/N. Pingel et al

A stunning image captured by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) and Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, shows one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors in new detail.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Nickolas Pingel, says it is the clearest ever picture of hydrogen emitted from the Small Magellanic Cloud.

"The clarity of this image is unprecedented," he said.

"We're able to see all of the small-scale structures for the first time. It's an important step in understanding the role hydrogen plays in the evolution of galaxies.

"For example, you can see holes within the gas. This shows us that hydrogen interacts with supernovae."

This study focused on the Small Magellanic Cloud—the nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

The team used the CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope and high-tech software to capture and process 100 hours of data.

Now they hope to take the project a step further.

"This specific image was part of a pilot survey," Dr. Pingel said.

"Over the next year we are going to collect more observations. Eventually we'll be able to connect them and make a giant mosaic which will show how this galaxy connects to its nearby neighbors."Astronomers create most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy

More information: N. M. Pingel et al, GASKAP-HI Pilot Survey Science I: ASKAP Zoom Observations of HI Emission in the Small Magellanic Cloud. arXiv:2111.05339v2 [astro-ph.GA], arxiv.org/abs/2111.05339

Provided by Australian National University