Most powerful solar storm in 6 years caused auroras all over the US & Canada

And nobody saw it coming.

A purple aurora glows on the horizon in a picture taken from an airplane mid flight

Hannah Osborne
Fri, March 24, 2023 

The strongest solar storm to hit Earth for six years sparked stunning auroras across the U.S., with intense light displays appearing as far south as Alabama and Northern California. Yet no one saw it coming.

The March 24 solar storm was the result of a "stealth" coronal mass ejection (CME) – or a gargantuan, fast-moving blob of plasma and magnetic field released from the sun – Live Science’s sister site Space.com reports. The CME came from a coronal hole wider than 20 Earths that was spewing out solar winds at speeds over 1.3 million mph (2.1 million km/h).

Tamitha Skov, a U.S. space weather forecaster, told Space.com that no one saw the G4 storm coming because it was "nearly invisible." She said these stealth storms launch far slower than a typical CMEs that erupts, so are more difficult to observe.


The blob of particles smashed into Earth’s atmosphere early on March 24, compressing the planet’s magnetic field and triggering a geomagnetic storm. It was classified as a G4, or "severe" storm on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s five-level scale. Impacts of a G4 storm include radio blackouts for several hours and navigation outages.

Storms can also push auroras being pushed to much lower latitudes than usual. Auroras, or Northern Lights, normally only appear at high latitudes near the North and South Poles, because Earth's magnetic field deflects electrons in solar wind toward the poles. But when a solar storm strikes, more charged particles collide with gases in the upper atmosphere, meaning the night light shows can appear closer to the equator.

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That was the case for last night's stealth storm.

"Forecasters completely missed this one," a post on SpaceWeather.com said. "Auroras spread into the United States as far south as Colorado and New Mexico during a severe (category G4) geomagnetic storm — the most intense in nearly 6 years."

Video and images showing the phenomena were shared by onlookers, including photographer Dakota Snider, who captured images of pink aurora from a flight between Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Snider told Live Science in a message on social media that this was the first time he had seen auroras. Snider closely follows weather and rare events because he is a professional photographer.

"Before we took off I was thinking about how I might get the opportunity to see them from the air, but it would be a pretty far stretch if it was possible. Once we were up at elevation, you could see a faint glow, and I thought it was the lights." Snider said.

"Everyone was asleep on the plane except the flight attendants who were beyond stoked to see such a rare event this far south!"

Vincent Ledvina, an astrophotographer and graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute also posted footage of the display. "Witnessed literally the most insane aurora of my life tonight in Fairbanks," he wrote on Twitter. "This was unreal."

Generally, the stronger the geomagnetic storm, the further from the poles auroras can be seen. According to NASA’s Fermilab, in 1859 a solar flare caused auroras as far south as Cuba. The Carrington Event, as it is known, is considered the strongest geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Mar. 24 to correct Dakota Snider's pronouns.

Strongest solar storm in nearly 6 years slams into Earth catching forecasters by surprise

Daisy Dobrijevic
Fri, March 24, 2023

Green band of aurora light in the sky above a rural building.

The most powerful solar storm in nearly six years slammed Earth today (March 24), but strangely, space weather forecasters didn't see it coming.

The geomagnetic storm peaked as a severe G4 on the 5-grade scale used by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the severity of space weather events. The storm's unexpected ferocity not only made auroras visible as far south as New Mexico in the U.S., but it also forced spaceflight company Rocket Lab to delay a launch by 90 minutes.

Geomagnetic storms are disturbances to Earth's magnetic field caused by solar material from coronal mass ejections (CME) — large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun's atmosphere. It turns out that this particular geomagnetic storm was triggered by a "stealth" CME which — as the name suggests — is rather tricky to detect.


Related: Huge solar tornado as tall as 14 Earths hurls plasma cloud into space. Here's the video.

NOAA's National Space Weather Service originally announced a "geomagnetic storm watch" on March 22, to come into effect on 23-25 March with possible moderate G2 storm conditions expected on March 24. So forecasters weren't completely caught off-guard, they however didn't expect a magnitude G4 storm.

It wasn't until 00:41 a.m. EDT ( 0441 GMT) on March 24 that NOAA uprated the warning to a severe G4 storm, which was after a stronger than forecasted G3 storm escalated to a G4 at 12:04 a.m. EDT (0404 GMT).

Graphic illustrating the G4 storm alert and shows high aurora activity in the northern polar regions illustrated by a bright red band across the globe.

NOAA's National Space Weather Service declared a G4 solar storm alert on March 24. 

(Image credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center)

U.S. space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov explained to Space.com in an email why the space weather community got it so wrong with this latest storm.

"These nearly invisible storms launch much more slowly than eruptive CMEs and are very difficult to observe leaving the sun's surface without specialized training," she said, adding that the stealth CMEs can also be "camouflaged" by other, more dense structures emanating from the sun, which makes them difficult to observe.

"This is why they are the cause of "problem geomagnetic storms" like the G4-level storm we are in now." Skov continued.

You can learn more about these stealthy solar storms in Skov's latest YouTube video where she describes the space weather event in more detail.

NOAA ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale running from G1, which could cause an increase in auroral activity around the poles and minor fluctuations in power supplies, up to G5, which includes extreme cases like the Carrington Event — a colossal solar storm that occurred September 1859, which disrupted telegraph services all over the world and triggered auroras so bright and powerful that they were visible as far south as the Bahamas.

Strong geomagnetic storms can be troublesome for spaceflight as they increase the density of gases in Earth's upper atmosphere, thereby increasing the drag on satellites and other spacecraft. In February 2022 SpaceX lost up to 40 brand-new Starlink satellites when they failed to reach orbit after being launched into a minor geomagnetic storm.

Rocket Lab delayed its launch this morning by approximately 90 minutes while assessing the evolving conditions of the geomagnetic storm, the company announced on Twitter. They successfully launched at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 GMT).

Another side effect of powerful geomagnetic storms is the incredible aurora displays they trigger. When energized particles from the sun slam into Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph (72 million kph), our planet's magnetic field funnels the particles toward the poles. The ensuing supercharging of molecules in Earth's atmosphere triggers the colorful spectacles, which usually remain limited to areas at high latitudes. This time, skywatchers around the world were treated to a dazzling auroral display that reached as far south as Colorado and New Mexico.

We can expect more extreme space weather events like this powerful geomagnetic storm as the sun builds towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025.

Rare show of Northern Lights dazzles North America

Brandon Drenon - BBC News, Washington
Fri, March 24, 2023

Northern Lights appear in the sky over Alaska.

Hues of pink, purple and green streaked the skies in North America overnight in a dazzling display of Northern Lights.

Weather officials said the aurora, which was seen from California to New York, as far south as Arizona and north into Canada, was "fairly unusual".

The event was categorised as a "severe geomagnetic storm" and received the second highest rating in strength, a G4. The strongest would be a G5.

A less severe storm is expected this weekend.

"We got more of an impact than we expected," Bill Murtagh, programme co-ordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather and Prediction Center, told the BBC.

The aurora seen on Thursday from Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada

Mr Murtagh explained that the Northern Lights phenomenon experienced last night was due to "several eruptions on the sun", which released high energy particles that collided with Earth's atmosphere "like a big magnet getting shot out of the sun".


"When these clouds of particles and magnetic fields from the sun hit the Earth's magnetic fields, we see these high energy particles will interact with the Earth's upper atmosphere and that will create the Northern Lights," he said.

An event like this will happen about 50 times every solar cycle, he said, which is 11 years. But this was the most severe geomagnetic storm in almost six years, according to spaceweather.com.

Mr Murtagh said we are currently approaching a point in the solar cycle where more eruptions on the sun will occur, in a period defined as the solar maximum.

Throughout the solar minimum, when activity on the sun is lower, less severe geomagnetic storms more commonly occur, and are typically seen in northern states like New England and along the Canadian border, he said.

But more frequent high level solar storms are on the way.

"The next coming years we are going to see the most solar activity," he said.

A ‘hole’ in the sun’s atmosphere will bring intense northern lights on Friday. 

Here’s where you can see them

Ashley Nash

Deseret News
Fri, March 24, 2023 


An aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, is seen in the night sky on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023, near Washtucna, Wash. The northern lights are predicted to be visible in the U.S. on March 24, 2023, due to an intense solar storm. | Ted S. Warren, Associated Press

Due to the strongest solar storm in five years, several states will be able to witness intense northern lights on Friday night, according to Forbes.

The perfect storm: A combination of cracks in the Earth’s magnetic shield, and a giant coronal hole in the sun’s atmosphere, allowed a “big blast” of charged particles from solar winds cause a G4-class geomagnetic storm, which will result in vibrant northern lights, Forbes stated.

Usually, northern lights are only visible close to the Arctic Circle, but the Space Weather Prediction Center says they could be visible farther south than usual, per Insider.

On Thursday night, the lights were visible in some places as far south as northern California and Nebraska, according to USA Today.

 

Where will the lights be visible? The aurora borealis forecast predicted a Kp index of 6 for Friday, per Insider, meaning that the lights will be visible somewhere in between the green and yellow lines in the image below:

NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center

The states along the northern border of the U.S. are the most likely to see the lights on Friday.

Tips for viewing the northern lights: The Space Weather Prediction Center states that in order to get a good view of the lights, you need to have a clear view of the northern horizon. Standing on a hill or elevated land is optimal so nothing blocks your view.

It must be dark to view the northern lights, meaning that you’ll need to get away from any city lights. This means that people near large metropolitan areas might have a lower chance of seeing them. Even the full moon or clouds can obstruct the view of the lights.


Northern lights are usually brightest between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, the SWPC said. The aurora borealis are usually their most intense around the fall and spring equinoxes, which is when geomagnetic storms are more likely to occur.

Scientists uncover the reason for alien comet ‘Oumuamua’s strange acceleration


Published March 24, 2023

`Oumuamua seems to be a dark red highly-elongated metallic or rocky object, about 400 metres long, and is unlike anything normally found in the Solar System. 

Source - ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC SA 4.0.

Discovered in 2017, ‘Oumuamua became the first observed interstellar object to zip through our solar system, and its appearance sparked questions scientists are still trying to answer.

‘Oumuamua was first spotted on 19 October 2017. A telescope in Hawaii spied it as it made its way past the Sun, reaching a top speed of 87 kilometers per second, or 54 miles per second —too fast to have originated in the Solar System. Astronomers named the object 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”

For several years, scientists speculated on what the strange interstellar object up to 400 meters long could actually be – was it an alien spacecraft? or possibly an asteroid?

No such object from beyond our Sun’s reaches had visited us before, with this interloper moving so fast it could not be bound to the Sun. ‘Oumuamua was also odd in that it looked like an asteroid but behaved like a comet.

Another odd thing about ‘Oumuamua was its strange acceleration as it hurtled away from the sun. All kinds of hypotheses were floated in light of its unexpected behavior, according to Reuters.


However, a new study published in the journal Nature last week has offered a more sober explanation – that ‘Oumuamua’s speed-up was due to the release of hydrogen gas as the comet warmed up in the sunlight.

The team of researchers says ‘Oumuamua was definitely a comet, albeit one with an unusual makeup. “We can explain a lot of the strange behavior,” says Jennifer Bergner, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study.

Bergner and her colleague Darryl Seligman, an astronomer at Cornell University, think they can now explain what happened. Their modeling shows ‘Oumuamua could have begun life as a regular water-rich comet around a nearby star, before being ejected.

They found that high-energy cosmic rays that pervade the Galaxy, emitted by supernovae and other energetic events, could have turned up to 30 percent of the comet’s water ice into hydrogen, which could have become trapped in ‘Oumuamua’s ice as it journeyed through interstellar space.

‘Oumuamua was accelerating as it moved, which would require more than just gravity. The object appeared to be pushed like comets are when they near the sun and the evaporation of their gas and dust by the sun’s heat causes a propulsive effect.

However, ‘Oumuamua didn’t look like a comet, nor did it have a tail or an envelope of gas and dust, called a coma, that all comets have, reports CNN News.

‘Oumuamua then was warmed up as it passed through our inner solar system, causing the comet’s ice structure to rearrange and releasing the trapped hydrogen gas.

This action gave ‘Oumuamua a little bit of a kick as it headed away from the sun. The release of this hydrogen in a process called outgassing would not cause a visible tail.

The simplest explanation, and exactly what we would expect for an interstellar comet, fits all of the data with no fine-tuning,” said Seligman, who is also a co-author in the study.

The study is “the most convincing model so far” for ‘Oumuamua, says Marco Micheli, an astronomer at the European Space Agency in Italy who was not involved with the work. The alien visitor, he says, was actually not so different from Solar System comets, Science.org. reports.

 

Surprisingly simple explanation for the alien comet 'Oumuamua's weird orbit

2017 comet's unusual acceleration explained by hydrogen outgassing from ice

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY

 

IMAGE: AN ARTIST'S DEPICTION OF THE INTERSTELLAR COMET 'OUMUAMUA, AS IT WARMED UP IN ITS APPROACH TO THE SUN AND OUTGASSED HYDROGEN (WHITE MIST), WHICH SLIGHTLY ALTERED ITS ORBIT. THE COMET, WHICH IS MOST LIKELY PANCAKE-SHAPED, IS THE FIRST KNOWN OBJECT OTHER THAN DUST GRAINS TO VISIT OUR SOLAR SYSTEM FROM ANOTHER STAR. view more 

CREDIT: NASA, ESA AND JOSEPH OLMSTED AND FRANK SUMMERS OF STSCI

In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or dust tail, like most comets, and a peculiar shape — something between a cigar and a pancake — and its small size more befitted an asteroid than a comet.

But the fact that it was accelerating away from the sun in a way that astronomers could not explain perplexed scientists, leading some to suggest that it was an alien spaceship.

Now, a University of California, Berkeley, astrochemist and a Cornell University astronomer argue that the comet's mysterious deviations from a hyperbolic path around the sun can be explained by a simple physical mechanism likely common among many icy comets: outgassing of hydrogen as the comet warmed up in the sunlight.

What made 'Oumuamua different from every other well-studied comet in our solar system was its size: It was so small that its gravitational deflection around the sun was slightly altered by the tiny push created when hydrogen gas spurted out of the ice.

Most comets are essentially dirty snowballs that periodically approach the sun from the outer reaches of our solar system. When warmed by sunlight, a comet ejects water and other molecules, producing a bright halo or coma around it and often tails of gas and dust. The ejected gases act like the thrusters on a spacecraft to give the comet a tiny kick that alters its trajectory slightly from the elliptical orbits typical of other solar system objects, such as asteroids and planets.

When discovered, 'Oumuamua had no coma or tail and was too small and too far from the sun to capture enough energy to eject much water, which led astronomers to speculate wildly about its composition and what was pushing it outward. Was it a hydrogen iceberg outgassing H2? A large, fluffy snowflake pushed by light pressure from the sun? A light sail created by an alien civilization? A spaceship under its own power?

Jennifer Bergner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of chemistry who studies the chemical reactions that occur on icy rocks in the cold vacuum of space, thought there might be a simpler explanation. She broached the subject with a colleague, Darryl Seligman, now an National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, and they decided to work together to test it.

"A comet traveling through the interstellar medium basically is getting cooked by cosmic radiation, forming hydrogen as a result. Our thought was: If this was happening, could you actually trap it in the body, so that when it entered the solar system and it was warmed up, it would outgas that hydrogen?" Bergner said. "Could that quantitatively produce the force that you need to explain the non-gravitational acceleration?"

Surprisingly, she found that experimental research published in the 1970s, '80s and '90s demonstrated that when ice is hit by high-energy particles akin to cosmic rays, molecular hydrogen (H2) is abundantly produced and trapped within the ice. In fact, cosmic rays can penetrate tens of meters into ice, converting a quarter or more of the water to hydrogen gas.

"For a comet several kilometers across, the outgassing would be from a really thin shell relative to the bulk of the object, so both compositionally and in terms of any acceleration, you wouldn't necessarily expect that to be a detectable effect," she said. "But because 'Oumuamua was so small, we think that it actually produced sufficient force to power this acceleration."

The comet, which was slightly reddish, is thought to have been roughly 115 by 111 by 19 meters in size. While the relative dimensions were fairly certain, however, astronomers couldn't be sure of the actual size because it was too small and distant for telescopes to resolve. The size had to be estimated from the comet’s brightness and how the brightness changed as the comet tumbled. To date, all the comets observed in our solar system — the short-period comets originating in the Kuiper belt and the long-period comets from the more distant Oort cloud have ranged from around 1 kilometer to hundreds of kilometers across.

"What's beautiful about Jenny's idea is that it's exactly what should happen to interstellar comets," Seligman said. "We had all these stupid ideas, like hydrogen icebergs and other crazy things, and it's just the most generic explanation."

Bergner and Seligman will publish their conclusions this week in the journal Nature. Both were postdoctoral fellows at the University of Chicago when they began collaborating on the paper.

Messenger from afar

Comets are icy rocks left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, so they can tell astronomers about the conditions that existed when our solar system formed. Interstellar comets can also give hints to the conditions around other stars surrounded by planet-forming disks.

"Comets preserve a snapshot of what the solar system looked like when it was in the stage of evolution that protoplanetary disks are now," Bergner said. "Studying them is a way to look back at what our solar system used to look like in the early formation stage."

Faraway planetary systems also seem to have comets, and many are likely to be ejected because of gravitational interactions with other objects in the system, which astronomers know happened over the history of our solar system. Some of these rogue comets should occasionally enter our solar system, providing an opportunity to learn about planet formation in other systems.

"The comets and asteroids in the solar system have arguably taught us more about planet formation than what we've learned from the actual planets in the solar system," Seligman said. "I think that the interstellar comets could arguably tell us more about extrasolar planets than the extrasolar planets we are trying to get measurements of today."

In the past, astronomers published numerous papers about what we can learn from the failure to observe any interstellar comets in our solar system.

Then, 'Oumuamua came along.

On Oct. 19, 2017, on the island of Maui, astronomers using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope, which is operated by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, first noticed what they thought was either a comet or an asteroid. Once they realized that its tilted orbit and high speed — 87 kilometers per second — implied that it came from outside our solar system, they gave it the name 1I/‘Oumuamua (oh MOO-uh MOO-uh), which is Hawai'ian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.” It was the first interstellar object aside from dust grains ever seen in our solar system. A second, 2I/Borisov, was discovered in 2019, though it looked and behaved more like a typical comet.

As more and more telescopes focused on 'Oumuamua, the astronomers were able to chart its orbit and determine that it had already looped around the sun and was headed out of the solar system.

Because 'Oumuamua's brightness changed periodically by a factor of 12 and varied asymmetrically, it was assumed to be highly elongated and tumbling end over end. Astronomers also noticed a slight acceleration away from the sun larger than seen for asteroids and more characteristic of comets. When comets approach the sun, the water and gases ejected from the surface create a glowing, gaseous coma and release dust in the process. Typically, dust left in the comet's wake becomes visible as one tail, while vapor and dust pushed by light pressure from solar rays produces a second tail pointing away from the sun, plus a little inertial push outward. Other compounds, such as entrapped organic materials and carbon monoxide, also can be released.

Why was it accelerating?

But astronomers could detect no coma, outgassed molecules or dust around 'Oumuamua. In addition, calculations showed that the solar energy hitting the comet would be insufficient to sublimate water or organic compounds from its surface to give it the observed non-gravitational kick. Only hypervolatile gases such as H2, N2 or carbon monoxide (CO) could provide enough acceleration to match observations, given the incoming solar energy.

"We had never seen a comet in the solar system that didn't have a dust coma. So, the non-gravitational acceleration really was weird," Seligman said.

This led to much speculation about what volatile molecules could be in the comet to cause the acceleration. Seligman himself published a paper arguing that if the comet was composed of solid hydrogen — a hydrogen iceberg — it would outgas enough hydrogen in the heat of the sun to explain the strange acceleration. Under the right conditions, a comet composed of solid nitrogen or solid carbon monoxide would also outgas with enough force to affect the comet's orbit.

But astronomers had to stretch to explain what conditions could lead to the formation of solid bodies of hydrogen or nitrogen, which have never been observed before. And how could a solid H2 body survive for perhaps 100 million years in interstellar space?

Bergner thought that outgassing of hydrogen entrapped in ice might be sufficient to accelerate 'Oumuamua. As both an experimentalist and a theoretician, she studies the interaction of very cold ice — chilled to 5 or 10 degrees Kelvin, the temperature of the interstellar medium (ISM) — with the kinds of energetic particles and radiation found in the ISM.

In searching through past publications, she found many experiments demonstrating that high-energy electrons, protons and heavier atoms could convert water ice into molecular hydrogen, and that the fluffy, snowball structure of a comet could entrap the gas in bubbles within the ice. Experiments showed that when warmed, as by the heat of the sun, the ice anneals — changes from an amorphous to a crystal structure — and forces the bubbles out, releasing the hydrogen gas. Ice at the surface of a comet, Bergner and Seligman calculated, could emit enough gas, either in a collimated beam or fan-shaped spray, to affect the orbit of a small comet like 'Oumuamua.

"The main takeaway is that 'Oumuamua is consistent with being a standard interstellar comet that just experienced heavy processing," Bergner said. "The models we ran are consistent with what we see in the solar system from comets and asteroids. So, you could essentially start with something that looks like a comet and have this scenario work."

The idea also explains the lack of a dust coma.

"Even if there was dust in the ice matrix, you're not sublimating the ice, you're just rearranging the ice and then letting H2 get released. So, the dust isn't even going to come out," Seligman said.

'Dark' comets

Seligman said that their conclusion about the source of 'Oumuamua's acceleration should close the book on the comet. Since 2017, he, Bergner and their colleagues have identified six other small comets with no observable coma, but with small non-gravitational accelerations, suggesting that such "dark" comets are common. While H2 is not likely responsible for the accelerations of dark comets, Bergner noted, together with 'Oumuamua they reveal that there is much to be learned about the nature of small bodies in the solar system.

One of these dark comets, 1998 KY26, is the next target for Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, which recently collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu. The 1998 KY26 was thought to be an asteroid until it was identified as a dark comet in December.

"Jenny's definitely right about the entrapped hydrogen. Nobody had thought of that before," he said. "Between discovering other dark comets in the solar system and Jenny's awesome idea, I think it's got to be correct. Water is the most abundant component of comets in the solar system and likely in extrasolar systems, as well. And if you put a water rich comet in the Oort cloud or eject it into the interstellar medium, you should get amorphous ice with pockets of H2."

Because H2 should form in any ice-rich body exposed to energetic radiation, the researchers suspect that the same mechanism would be at work in sun-approaching comets from the Oort cloud at the outer reaches of the solar system, where comets are irradiated by cosmic rays, much like an interstellar comet would be. Future observations of hydrogen outgassing from long-period comets could be used to test the scenario of H2 formation and entrapment.

Many more interstellar and dark comets should be discovered by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), allowing astronomers to determine if hydrogen outgassing is common in comets. Seligman has calculated that the survey, which will be conducted at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and is set to become operational in early 2025, should detect between one and three interstellar comets like 'Oumuamua every year, and likely many more that have a telltale coma, like Borisov.

Bergner was supported by a NASA Hubble Fellowship grant. Seligman was supported by the National Science Foundation (AST-17152) and NASA (80NSSC19K0444, NNX17AL71A).

---

JOURNAL

Nature

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

ARTICLE TITLE

Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Mar-2023

PARENTS RIGHTS ANOTHER NAME FOR CENSORSHIP
Principal resigns after complaints on 'David' statue nudity

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida charter school principal has been forced to resign after a parent complained sixth graders were exposed to pornography during a lesson on Renaissance art that included Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi speak during a press conference in front of Michelangelo's "David statue" after their bilateral summit in Florence, Italy, Jan. 23, 2015. A Florida charter school principal has been forced to resign after a parent complained sixth graders were exposed to pornography during a lesson on Renaissance art that included Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)© Provided by The Associated Press

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that the principal, Hope Carrasquilla, of Tallahassee Classical School resigned this week after an ultimatum from the school board's chairman.

One parent complained the material was pornographic and two other parents said they wanted to be notified of the lesson before it was given to their children, Carrasquilla said. The instruction also included Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” painting and Botticelli's “Birth of Venus.”

“It saddens me that my time here had to end this way,” Carrasquilla told the paper.

The “David” statue's nudity has been part of a centuries-old debate about art pushing boundaries and the rules of censorship. In the 1500s, metal fig leaves covered the genitals of statues like David when the Roman Catholic Church deemed nudity as immodest and obscene.

The kerfuffle in Florida also prompted social media users to point out similarities to a 1990s episode of “The Simpsons” where characters debate the censorship of the "David" statue.

EU, Germany edge towards solution on combustion engine row
Story by By Kate Abnett and Philip Blenkinsop • Thursday

European Union flags fly outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Germany and the European Union are on course to resolve a dispute over the bloc's planned 2035 phaseout of CO2-emitting cars, EU leaders said at a summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Berlin's last-minute opposition to one of Europe's biggest climate change policies was not part of the official summit agenda, but has overshadowed the discussions.

"If I understand correctly the talks between the Commission and the German government... everything is on a good path," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on his arrival to the summit.

Scholz did not specify when he expects a deal to be reached. Some leaders, such as Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and EU officials suggested it would be a matter of days.

"Negotiations are progressing. There is a will on both sides to resolve this topic," EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen told a news conference after the first day of the summit. "I am confident that soon we will find a good solution," she said.

Related video: Can e-fuels help make cars CO2-neutral? (Reuters)
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The EU law is expected to make it impossible to sell new combustion engine cars in the EU after 2035. Germany's Transport Ministry wants assurances that new combustion engine cars can be sold beyond that date if they run on e-fuels - a request supported by parts of Germany's powerful car industry.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said a number of countries had been won round to e-fuels, saying they could reduce EU reliance on batteries and materials from China for electric vehicles.

"There's a lot of agreement on this topic. France also supports this position now. For us, it's an important signal," he told reporters after Thursday's session closed.

Last-minute opposition from Germany's transport ministry came after EU countries and lawmakers had already agreed a deal last year to ban combustion engines.

The dispute has raised concerns among some EU officials that political deals on other major laws could unravel.

The Ministry and the European Commission, which drafts EU laws, are in talks. A draft EU Commission proposal, seen by Reuters this week, suggested allowing carmakers to register sales in a new type of vehicle category, for cars that can only run on carbon neutral fuels.



 Cars pass a sign alerting about fine particulates on a busy street in downtown Stuttgart© Thomson Reuters

(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Philip Blenkinsop, Sabine Siebold, Bart Meijer; editing by Barbara Lewis and Benoit Van Overstraeten)

FILTHY LUCRE

ECB pressures Austria’s Raiffeisen bank to quit Russia

By Reuters News Service   

March 24, 2023

The European Central Bank is pressing Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBIV.VI) to unwind its highly profitable business in Russia, five people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The pressure comes after a top US sanctions official raised concerns about Raiffeisen’s business in Russia on a visit to Vienna last month, said another person familiar with the matter, asking not to be named due to its sensitivity.

The push from Washington and the ECB is upping the stakes for Austria and its second-biggest bank, which plays a key role in the Russian economy but also an increasingly contested one as Moscow’s year-long war in Ukraine drags on. Many Western companies, including French bank Societe Generale, have already left Russia.

While the ECB is not asking Raiffeisen to leave the country immediately, it wants a plan of action for unwinding the business, two of the people said. One person said such a plan could include the sale or closure of its Russian bank.

“We have been asking banks to keep closely monitoring the business in Russia, and ideally, reduce it and wind it down as much as possible,” a spokesperson for the ECB said, adding it had been doing the same with all institutions concerned since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Raiffeisen, however, does not intend to present such a plan yet, the people said, and some Austrian government officials see the moves as unwarranted foreign meddling.

A Raiffeisen spokesperson said that it was examining options for its Russia business “including a carefully managed exit” and that it was “expediting” its assessment, adding that it had also reduced lending in the country.

The Austrian lender is now the most important Western bank in Russia, offering a payments lifeline and accounting for roughly one quarter of euro transfers to the country, although other banks, such as Italy’s UniCredit, are still present.

ECB officials are reluctant to pressure Raiffeisen into an immediate sale, fearing the financial hit it could trigger, one person said, after a week of global banking turmoil.

A spokesperson for Austria’s finance ministry said that while there could be no return to the status quo in relations with Russia, “most” international companies, including banks remained there.

“There is substantial trade going on between Russia and the rest of the world in commodities like grain, fertilisers, oil, gas, nickel and other metals, which…require payments,” said the spokesperson.

HIGH STAKES

In January, the US sanctions authority launched an inquiry into Raiffeisen over its business related to Russia.

Two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters that the probe concerned potential breaches of Western sanctions. Raiffeisen said the inquiry was of a general nature.

The inquiry, which has strained relations between Vienna and Washington, could prove perilous for Austria, which had modelled itself as a bridge between east and west, turning Vienna into a magnet for Russian money.

James O’Brien, a senior sanctions official with the US Department of State, spelt out American concerns over Raiffeisen and its business with Russia during discussions in Vienna in February, one of the people said.

“Ambassador O’Brien and Austrians discussed our close cooperation on sanctions in response to Russia’s illegal further invasion of Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said when asked about the visit.

The Raiffeisen spokesperson said that the bank was in the “early stages” of collecting information to respond to the inquiry letter from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

During Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen’s visit to Kyiv last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticised Austrian businesses still operating in Russia, singling out Raiffeisen, for supporting Moscow.

The bank has also been sharply criticised by investors after participating in a Russian scheme to grant loan payment holidays to troops fighting in Ukraine.

Although the stakes are high, some Austrian officials hope they can hold out long enough for a negotiated resolution to the war, allowing for a resumption of normal business with Russia, three of the people familiar with the matter said.

Austria’s foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg has said that while it is “legitimate” for US authorities to approach Raiffeisen, Austria had primary responsibility for enforcing sanctions.

US authorities can go as far as preventing a bank from processing dollar transactions, a step that would deal a serious blow to Raiffeisen and that euro zone regulators fear could destabilise the bank.

Latvia’s ABLV Bank quickly unravelled after being placed under US sanctions in 2018 due to concerns about illicit activity connected in large part to Russia.

Some Austrian lawmakers are also critical of the government’s stance.

“Supervisory authorities must examine the risks from Raiffeisen’s activity and that from day one of the war,” Stephanie Krisper, a lawmaker from the liberal Neos opposition party told Reuters last week.

“For many years, connections to Moscow permeated our political system – now, the economic and political dependence on Russia has finally become visible.”

Hindenburg Takes Aim at Dorsey's Payments Firm Block, Shares Plunge

The logo of Cash App is seen at the main hall during the 

Bitcoin Conference 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. April 6, 2022. 

Marco Bello/REUTERS

By Manya Saini

(Reuters) - Hindenburg Research on Thursday disclosed short positions in Block Inc and alleged that the payments firm led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey overstated its user numbers and understated its customer acquisition costs.

Block vowed to fight back, saying it would explore legal action against the short seller for its "factually inaccurate and misleading report" that was "designed to deceive and confuse investors".

"Hindenburg is known for these types of attacks, which are designed solely to allow short sellers to profit from a declined stock price," the payments firm said, adding that it would work with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Block's shares were last down 15% at $61.67, paring some losses after a 22% plunge earlier.

Hindenburg, which was behind a market rout of over $100 billion in India's Adani Group, said in its report that former Block employees estimated that 40% to 75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual.

The move is seen as a challenge to Dorsey, who co-founded Block in 2009 in his San Francisco apartment with the goal to shake up the credit card industry, and is the company's largest shareholder with a stake of around 8%.

The NYU dropout was just until two years ago splitting his time between the payments firm and Twitter, his other venture that went private in 2022 in a $44 billion buyout by Elon Musk that Dorsey supported.

"Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping," Hindenburg said in a note published on its website.

The report comes at a time when the outlook for the payments industry has been clouded by worries over the strength of consumer spending in the face of elevated levels of inflation and expectations of an economic downturn.

Those concerns triggered a more than 60% slump in Block's shares last year.

Hindenburg said that Block "obfuscates" how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting "misleading transacting active metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts".

Reuters could not verify the claims raised in the report.

Cash App allows users to transfer money through a mobile application and is touted by the company as an alternative to traditional banking services.

The app had 51 million monthly transacting actives, a 16% year-over-year increase during December 2022, Block said in a fourth-quarter earnings letter.

The short seller added that co-founders Dorsey and James McKelvey collectively sold over $1 billion of stock during the pandemic as the company's share price soared.

Other executives including finance chief Amrita Ahuja and the lead manager for Cash App Brian Grassadonia also dumped millions of dollars in stock, the report added.

"What I am really concerned about is the Cash App, accusations of fraud, multiple accounts, opening accounts and fake names. And it doesn't seem like that would be something that they would allow," said Christopher Brendler, senior analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

"(There is) some evidence in the report that this is happening. So, you know, I think that's the most damaging part of the report," he added. 

Graphic: Year-over-year gross profit growth in Block's Cash App, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BLOCK-CASHAPP/CHART/znvnbljajvl/chart.png

Based on the session's 20% price move, as of 9:55 a.m. ET, short sellers have made over $400 million in paper profit, according to data from financial analytics firm Ortex. Short interest was 27.96 million shares, or 5.21% of free float.

The company's ticker was the top trending on retail investor-focused forum StockTwits.

Block has also taken a hit from the upheaval in the cryptocurrency industry that forms a large chunk of its revenue base.

The company offers point-of-sales systems and an app that allows people to trade cryptocurrency.

Last month, Block said it was "meaningfully slowing" the pace of hiring this year to control costs.

Founded in 2017 by Nathan Anderson, Hindenburg is a forensic financial research firm that analyses equity, credit and derivatives.

Hindenburg invests its own capital and takes short positions against companies. After finding potential wrongdoings, the company usually publishes a report explaining the case and bets against the target company, hoping to make a profit.

Short sellers typically sell borrowed securities and aim to buy these back at a lower price.

(Reporting by Manya Saini, Akriti Sharma, Mehnaz Yasmin and Jaiveer Singh Shekhwat in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Sriraj Kalluvila and Shounak Dasgupta)

LGBTQ RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

After recent mass LGBTQ arrests, Grindr sends warning to all its users in Egypt



Popular gay dating app Grindr has sent an alert to all of its users in Egypt warning that police arrested dozens of its users over the weekend. 

Photo by Vdovichenko Denis/Shutterstock

March 23 (UPI) -- Grindr, the popular gay dating application, has sent an alert to all of its users in Egypt warning that police arrested dozens of its users over the weekend.

Patrick Lenihan, the company's vice president and head of communications, confirmed the alert Thursday in an emailed statement to UPI.

"Persecution of LGBTQ people anywhere is unacceptable," Lenihan said in the statement.

Lenihan added that Grindr is working with groups on the ground in Egypt to ensure that the users of the app have up-to-date information on how to stay safe.

"We are pushing international organizations and governments to demand justice and safety for the Egyptian LGBTQ community," Lenihan said. "Our hearts are with our community in Egypt."

The alert, which was first sent to Egyptian users on Monday, warned that police were "actively making arrests of gay, bi, and trans people" on digital platforms including Grindr.

"They are using fake accounts and have also taken over accounts from real community members who have already been arrested and had their phones taken," the alert reads.

"Please take extra caution both online and offline, including with accounts that may have seemed legitimate in the past."

Lenihan, in comments to NBC News, said the company decided to issue the warning after LGBTQ groups in Egypt warned the company of as many as 40 arrests this past weekend.

Article 19, an international advocacy group, noted in a 2018 fact sheet for members of the LGBTQ community that Egyptian law "remains vague" on the rights for LGBTQ people.

"The Egyptian Penal Code criminalizes homosexuality under the term 'habitual debauchery' in Article 9, paragraph (c) of Law 10/1961 for combating adultery and debauchery," the fact sheet reads.

"If charged under this law, a person can be imprisoned from six months to three years per charge and can be given a fine of 100 to 300 Egyptian pounds (about $10)."

The organization warned that the presence of an account on dating apps can be used as evidence in charging someone with promoting so-called debauchery.

Human Rights Watch, the international human rights watchdog group, also warned in 2020 that LGBTQ people who were arrested have been detained in "inhuman conditions" and systematically subjected to "ill-treatment including torture."

"Human Rights Watch documented cases of torture, including severe and repeated beatings and sexual violence, in police custody, often under the guise of forced anal exams or 'virginity tests,'" the organization said in its 2020 report.

"Police and prosecutors also inflicted verbal abuse, extracted forced confessions, and denied detainees access to legal counsel and medical care."

The news came after Uganda's parliament on Wednesday passed a law forbidding people from identifying as LGBTQ.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M PRO SPORTS
Four indicted in defrauding NBA players a collective $13M

A former adviser at investment bank Morgan Stanley was one of four people arrested Thursday in two separate schemes that reportedly defrauded several current and former NBA players, according to the Justice Department. 

 Bastian Kienitz/Shutterstock

March 23 (UPI) -- A former adviser at investment bank Morgan Stanley was one of four people arrested Thursday in two separate schemes that reportedly defrauded several current and former NBA players, according to the Justice Department.

The indictment unsealed Thursday does not refer to the player and former players by name, who were collectively bilked out of $13 million.

Jrue Holiday, currently a guard for the Milwaukee Bucks, as well as former players Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee are reportedly among the victims.

Former Morgan Stanley adviser Darryl Cohen was arrested in California Thursday morning, as was his alleged co-conspirator, Brian Gilder.

Charles Briscoe, a former NBA agent, was arrested in Katy, Texas, while officials took Calvin Darden Jr. into custody in Atlanta, Ga.

All four men were scheduled to appear in federal court Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors contend the four men enticed the players and former players to transfer payments into their control, which were then used for unauthorized personal uses.

Cohen and Gilder reportedly convinced three athletes to purchase life insurance policies, unknowingly at heavily marked up prices. Investigators contend the policies were sold through a law firm with ties to Gilder, netting the two about $5 million.

Gilder allegedly used some of the proceeds to pay off a mortgage, while Cohen, who worked at Morgan Stanley between 2015 and 2021, carried out extensive renovations to his home.

Darden Jr., previously pled guilty to wire fraud in the Southern District of New York. He is accused of convincing a player to send him $7 million to help fund the purchase of a women's basketball team, and then spending the money on personal expenses.

Briscoe, the former agent, is accused of forging documents, including contracts to fraudulently obtain money from players.

Stanford graduate student creates 'Collyge' video app to replace TikTok


As lawmakers, including Rep. Kat Camamck, R-Fla., grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Capitol Hill Thursday, a Stanford graduate student and his partners announced the creation of the "Collyge" app, which seeks to replace TikTok on college campuses. 

Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo


March 23 (UPI) -- As the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew Thursday, a Stanford graduate student and his partners announced the creation of a social media platform that they say could replace TikTok for college students.

Ian Gunther, a Stanford varsity gymnast and high profile social media commentator on gymnastics, has been developing the "Collyge" app for two years in partnership with Connyct Inc, a technology platform that develops short-form video functionality.

Data from the Collyge app is encrypted and kept on servers in the U.S., keystrokes are not logged, sensitive user data is not stored, and only public-facing information is tracked, according to a press release from Connyct Thursday.

"Collyge creates an environment for my university peers to socialize in a safe and private manner with short-form video -- just as they are accustomed to do with TikTok," says Gunther.

"Collyge's key features were specifically designed for students while protecting its users from prying eyes. Most importantly, we do not monetize Collyge's user data; we keep it private. It's that simple," he continued.

Connyct CEO Warren Cohn said, "Collyge enables students to safely connect with each other without fear of others intruding, such as parents or future employers."

"As TikTok is banned on campuses throughout the country. We intend to be a short-form video replacement that's safe for consumption and build in the USA," he continued.

RELATEDTikTok updates community guidelines ahead of U.S. Congressional hearing

On Capitol Hill Thursday, Chew said "there are more than 150 million Americans who love our platform, and we know we have a responsibility to protect them."

Lawmakers were unimpressed by Chew's claims that TikTok plans to section off its U.S. information from the rest of the company.

"I still believe that the Beijing communist government will still control and have the ability to influence what you do," said Rep Frank Pallone, D-N.J.

BIDEN'S FIRST VETO
House Republicans fail to overturn Biden veto on social governance rule


House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and his conference failed

 to overturn President Joe Biden's first veto on Thursday. 

Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo


March 23 (UPI) -- House Republicans on Thursday failed to override President Joe Biden's veto of a bill that would have prevented retirement fund managers from considering social factors when making investments.

The 219-200 vote fell far short of the two-thirds needed to overcome the president's veto.

House Republicans had passed the bill as a way to take aim at environmental and social governance, or ESG, strategies. The Labor Department passed a rule last year that makes it easier for retirement plans to take into account climate change and other social factors.

Republicans have said that it is unfair to certain companies, including in the oil and gas industry, and can be bad for investors. The bill passed the Senate last week with Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joining with all Republicans to vote yes.

However, Biden had said he would veto the bill before it even passed the House.

"Retirement plan fiduciaries should be able to consider any factor that maximizes financial returns for retirees across the country," he said before the House voted no the bill, according to USA Today. "That is not controversial -- that is common sense."

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that his chamber would continue to vote fight against the rule.

"House Republicans will keep fighting to overturn this rule allowing ESG investing and to make sure Americans are getting the best retirement they can, not the most woke," he wrote in his weekly floor lookout, according to ABC News.