Europe's liberals, Greens say abortion must be a right in EU charter

Story by DPA International • 

Terry Reintke, German and European lead candidate for the Greens in the European elections, attends a press conference. Senior figures from the Green and liberal factions in the European Parliament have spoken in favour of including the right to abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, echoing a call by French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Christoph Soeder/dpa© DPA International

Senior figures from the Green and liberal factions in the European Parliament have spoken in favour of including the right to abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, echoing a call by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Green parliamentary group leader Terry Reintke and Valérie Hayer, who is the leader of the liberal Renew group, spoke to Germany's RND media group for an interview published on Sunday.

"The right to safe abortion belongs in the EU Charter as a fundamental right," Reintke, a German politician who has served as a member of the European Parliament since 2014, told RND.

The right for a woman to make autonomous decisions about their body should not depend on which political parties happen to hold power at any given time, she said.

Hayer, an MEP from France and ally of Macron, also told RND that she supported the French president's initiative.

"While the radical right is working hard to find new ways to push through its reactionary agenda, we in a truly liberal society must stand up for women's rights more resolutely than ever: The right to abortion must be enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, because we must never leave women's rights to the populists," she said.

Macron declared on Friday that the freedom to have an abortion should be included in the charter, which acts as a bill of rights for EU citizens.

France anchored the right to abortion into its constitution following a landmark vote in parliament on Monday.

Abortions up to the 10th week of pregnancy have been allowed in France since 1975. Since then, the law has changed to allow abortions up to the 14th week.

UK

Now quash the striking miners' convictions just like the innocent sub-postmasters who were exonerated, Labour MPs demand

Story by Brendan Carlin, Political Correspondent • Daily Mail

More than 8,000 people were charged during the bitterly-fought strike

Men 'wrongly convicted' during the 1980s miners' strike should get the same blanket exoneration now offered to innocent sub-postmasters, Labour MPs demanded last night.

They want the criminal records, including convictions, of thousands of striking miners erased by a single piece of legislation.

The radical approach is now being offered by the Government to give justice to hundreds of people wrongly convicted of theft and other offences in the Post Office 'Horizon' computer system scandal.

On the 40th anniversary of the start of the bitterly-fought 1984/85 miners' dispute, Left-wing Labour MPs Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett said it was 'only right' that the same remedy was given to miners wrongly convicted during the strike.

More than 8,000 people were charged during the bitterly-fought strike, mostly with breach of the peace and obstruction.


The National Miners Strike 1984 Miners and their families from Westoe Colliery march to the Town Hall in South Shields, on March 10, 1984© Provided by Daily Mail

Mr Trickett, MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire, said: 'It is entirely right that we pass a blanket law giving the sub-postmasters the justice they so clearly deserve.

'But there is a glaring need to correct another long standing injustice – that of the many innocent striking miners who were left with charges and convictions that they never deserved.

He appealed to the Government to make the anniversary of the strike by 'righting the wrongs that we all know took place and wipe the stain from these people's records.

'And if this Government is not willing to do so, I hope that an incoming Labour government would introduce rapid review of what happened and allow legislation to correct historic wrongs.'

Former miner Mr Lavery, ex-Labour Party chairman, said: 'On the 40th Anniversary of the miners' strike, any respectable Government would consider securing justice for those wrongfully convicted during the dispute.


Former sub-postmaster Alan Bates and his partner Suzanne Sercombe arriving at the High Court to discuss the Horizon scandal © Provided by Daily Mail

'This is long overdue.'

But last night, one senior Tory MP warned against another blanket exoneration move.

He told the Mail on Sunday: 'The sub-postmasters' plan should very much be a one-off.

'We can't start willy-nilly ripping up hundreds of other types of conviction simply by passing a law at Westminster.

'This is terribly dangerous territory.'

However, miners convicted in Scotland have already received a pardon which SNP MP Owen Thompson now wants extending to those in England and Wales.Read more

TONTON MACOUTE REDUX

Why is Haiti so chaotic? Leaders used street gangs to gain power. Then the gangs got stronger

Why is Haiti so chaotic? Leaders used street gangs to gain power. Then the gangs got stronger© 

Haiti’s prime minister was last seen in Puerto Rico, negotiating his return to a homeland gripped by violence and controlled by heavily armed gangsters. With his fate in the air and the situation in Haiti deteriorating by the day, the world has been left to wonder whether the country will fully descend into anarchy or whether some semblance of order will be restored.

What is going on in Haiti?

It’s easy to blame this latest spasm of violence in the West's first free Black republic on longstanding poverty, the legacy of colonialism, widespread deforestation, and European and U.S. interference.

However, a series of experts told The Associated Press that the most important immediate cause is more recent: Haitian rulers’ increasing dependence on street gangs.

Haiti hasn’t had a standing army or a well-funded and robust national police force for decades.

United Nations and American interventions have come and gone. Without a solid tradition of honest political institutions, Haitian leaders have been using armed civilians as tools for exercising power.

Now, the state has grown fatally weak and gangs are stepping in to take its place.

Gang leaders, surreally, hold news conferences. And many see them as future stakeholders in negotiations over the country’s future.

How did Haiti get here?

A 1990s embargo was imposed after the military overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The embargo and the international isolation devastated the country’s small middle class, said Michael Deibert, author of “Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti,” and “Haiti Will Not Perish:

 A Recent History.”

After a U.S.-backed U.N. force pushed out the coup's leaders in 1994, a World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment led to the importation of rice from the U.S. and devastated rural agricultural society, Deibert said.

Boys without work flooded into Port-au-Prince and joined gangs. Politicians started using them as a cheap armed wing. Aristide, a priest-turned-politician, gained notoriety for using gangsters.

In December 2001, police official Guy Philippe attacked the National Palace in an attempted coup and Aristide called on the gangsters to rise from the slums, Deibert said.

“It wasn’t the police defending their government’s Palais Nacional,” remembered Deibert, who was there. “It was thousands of armed civilians.”

“Now, you have these different politicians that have been collaborating with these gangs for years, and ... it blew up in their face,” he continued.

How did weak foreign intervention hurt Haiti?

Many of the gangs retreated in the face of MINUSTAH, a U.N. force established in 2004.

Rene Preval, the only democratically elected president to win and complete two terms in a country notorious for political upheaval, took a hard line on the gangs, giving them the choice to “disarm or be killed,” said Robert Fatton, professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia.

After his presidency, subsequent leaders were at best easy on the gangs and at worst tied to them, he said.

Fatton said every key actor in Haitian society had their gangs, noting that the current situation isn't unique, but that it has deteriorated at a faster pace.

“For the last the three years, the gangs started to gain autonomy. And now they are a power unto themselves,” he said, likening them to a “mini-Mafia state.”

“The autonomy of the gangs has reached a critical point. It is why they are capable now of imposing certain conditions on the government itself," Fatton said.

"Those who created the gangs created a monster. And now the monster may not be totally in charge, but it has the capacity to block any kind of solution,” he said.

How does gang money hurt Haiti?

The gangs, along with many Haitian politicians and business people, earn money from an illicit brew of “taxes" gleaned through extortion, kidnappings, and drugs and weapons smuggling, Fatton said.

“There are all kinds criminal networks in the area,” he said.

After Preval, gangs, politicians and business people extracted every dollar they could, said Francois Pierre-Louis, a professor of political science at Queens College at The City University of New York.

“It was open house for gangs, drugs, the country, basically ... became a narco-trafficking state,” he said. “Basically, the gangs got empowered, and not only they got empowered, they had state protection, politicians protecting them.”

Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press

En.wikipedia.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonton_Macoute

Tonton Macoute - Wikipedia 

Haitians named this force after the Haitian mythological bogeyman, Tonton Macoute ("Uncle Gunnysack"), who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them ...

Britannica.com

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tontons-Macoutes

Tontons Macoutes | Haitian paramilitary organization - Brita... 

aide, Clément Barbot, organized the Tontons Macoutes (“Bogeymen”), a private force responsible for terrorizing and assassinating alleged foes of the regime.

Medium.com

https://medium.com/globetrotters/haiti-the-ton-ton-macoute-and-voodoo-my-wildest-travel-story-b16b09f9a7f3

HAITI, THE TON-TON MACOUTE, AND VOODOO: MY WILDEST ... 

Mar 7, 2022 ... Alix introduced the man with his arm in a sling as Eloise Maitre. Eloise was the head of the feared “Tonton Macoute”, the Haitian secret police.

Csmonitor.com

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0120/5-reasons-why-Haiti-s-Jean-Claude-Duvalier-is-infamous/Tonton-Macoutes

5 reasons why Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier is infamous 

Jan 20, 2011 ... Known as the "Tonton Macoutes," which is the name of a Haitian Creole mythological character who kidnaps children and eats them for breakfast, ...

Library.brown.edu

https://library.brown.edu/firstreading2010/tonton.html

First Readings 2010: The Dew Breaker - The Tonton Macoutes 

Before Duvalier rose to power, he was a doctor and gained the epithet "Papa Doc." The phrase "Tonton Macoutes" translates to "Uncle Gunnysack." In Hai...

Latinamericanstudies.org

https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/tontons.htm

Tonton Macoutes - LatinAmericanStudies.org 

dungeon Fort Dimanche. Female macoute, right-hand woman of Papa Doc.

Donated Renaissance-era astronomy book surprises university with hidden text

Story by Elizabeth Howell

 • 

An early astronomy text, written by Copernicus and published in 1543, postulating that the sun is the center of the universe.© Carlos Ortiz /RIT

There might be an undiscovered treatise hidden within a Renaissance astronomy book.

One of two astronomy books recently donated to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), located west of Buffalo in New York State, appears to be a palimpsest — a work written over top of previous material, which has been partially or entirely erased.

Vellum, or fine parchment made from animal skins, was a pricey material in the Renaissance. Sometimes, parchment was reused to save money. Astronomy experts suspect that an older text is lurking beneath the words of the donated book, a 15th century version of a work by 13th century scholar and monk Johannes de Sacrobosco. RIT imaging science students will try to decipher the erased words, according to university officials.

The other donated book is a famous work by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus from 1543. Copernicus showed by mathematical proofs and sky observations that the sun — not Earth — is the center of our solar system, generations before the telescope was invented in the early 17th century. (Copernicus also suggested the sun was in the center of the universe, which was later disproved as technology and mathematical calculations improved.)

Related: Our solar system's planets aren't weird after all. Exoplanets have tilted orbits, too

"My family ... agreed that we wanted the precious texts to live somewhere they would be actively studied and used, rather than sold to a private collector," stated donor Irene Conley, whose late brother Martin Harris was a student at RIT in the mid-1960s. "When the books arrived at RIT, I was so pleased to learn that students were carefully unwrapping them and that the plan is to use them for advanced work and research."

As a set, the books demonstrate how quickly astronomical science shifted in the Renaissance. In Sacrobosco's day, his Latin language book "De sphaera mundi" ("On the Sphere of the World") put Earth at the center of the universe, following a model suggested 12 centuries before by Alexandrian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy.

In the 16th century, Copernicus was part of a growing group of astronomers convinced that the sun is at the middle of things. While not the accepted view by society — the Catholic Church was among the groups backing an Earth-centered cosmos — he used a long-standing "existing line of thinking," the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) emphasized in an analysis of Copernicus' work.

For example, the ancient Greek astronomers Plato and Eudoxus knew that Mercury and Venus always stayed close to the sun, based on science work conducted more than a millennium before the Renaissance. Numerous models in the intervening centuries had proposed varieties of solar system types, such as Aristarchus of Samos' heliocentric universe. Alternatively, Martianus Capella postulated in the fifth century that Earth was the center of the universe, but that Mercury and Venus orbited the sun.

"Although not part of the mainstream, these were all ideas that Copernicus built upon," the LOC statement added. The astronomer in fact waited about 30 years to publish his work, known as "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), to avoid controversy.

But the sun-centered model Copernicus proposed is rather different than the reality. Copernicus didn't think that planets moved in ellipses, but in perfect circles. So to account for deviations in motion, he used epicycles — circles within circles — as Ptolemy did before, the LOC wrote. The work of Copernicus, which re-evaluated past science, was nevertheless crucial. Both Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler refined planetary motions decades later by, in part, using Copernicus' work.

Thousands rally again in Ottawa against Israel's siege of Gaza

Story by Staff Reporter • Ottawa Citizen
    
Thousands of Palestinian supporters joined together to protest on Ottawa streets Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, they marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core.© Provided by Ottawa Citizen

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on Parliament Hill on Saturday in one of the largest such rallies in Ottawa since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began in October.

Braving rain and a biting late-winter wind, the group marched up Wellington Street behind a banner that said “End the Genocide in Gaza.” Waving the ubiquitous green, red, white and black Palestinian flag and banging drums, the group demanded an arms embargo and political sanctions on Israel and an immediate reinstatement of funding to the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency.

On Friday, Canada announced it would resume funding to UNRWA, which it had suspended in late January after reports that UNRWA workers were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.

International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said Friday said that UNRWA played a “critical role” supporting Gaza’s two million residents, but added there must be “zero tolerance” for terror in the agency.

Saturday’s March for Gaza on Parliament Hill was one of dozens of similar rallies around the world. The Ottawa march drew busloads of demonstrators from Montreal, Toronto and elsewhere. Police closed Wellington Street during the protest. Numerous fireworks were set off as well as red and green smoke grenades.

Police and city bylaw officers stood nearby, but there were no arrests.


Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the largest such rally since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser




Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser

Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser


Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser




Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser


Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser


Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser


Palestinian supporters joined together to protest in Ottawa on Saturday. Starting on Parliament Hill, the participants then marched west on Wellington Street to Bank Street and through the downtown core. It was the one of the largest such rallies since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October.© Ashley Fraser

Scientists offer evidence to support possible Great Sphinx origin story

Story by By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

 •

More than 40 years ago, Farouk El-Baz — a space scientist and geologist known for his field investigations in deserts around the world — theorized that the wind played a big hand in shaping the Great Sphinx of Giza before the ancient Egyptians added surface details to the landmark sculpture.

Now, a new study offers evidence to suggest that theory might be plausible, according to a news release from New York University.

A team of scientists in NYU’s Applied Mathematics Laboratory set out to address the theory by replicating the conditions of the landscape about 4,500 years ago — when the limestone statue was likely built — and conduct tests to see how wind manipulated rock formations.

“Our findings offer a possible ‘origin story’ for how Sphinx-like formations can come about from erosion,” said senior study author Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, in a news release. “Our laboratory experiments showed that surprisingly Sphinx-like shapes can, in fact, come from materials being eroded by fast flows.”

The team behind the study, which the release said had been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Fluids, created clay-model yardangs — a natural landform of compact sand that occurs from the wind in exposed desert regions — and washed the formations with a fast stream of water to represent the wind.

Based on the composition of the Great Sphinx, the team used harder, non-erodible inclusions within the featureless soft-clay mound, and with the flow from the water tunnel, the researchers found a lion form had begun to take shape.

Within the desert, there are yardangs that exist that naturally look like seated or lying animals with raised heads, Ristroph told CNN. “Some of them look so much like a seated lion, or a seated cat, that they’re sometimes called Mud Lions. … Our experiments could add to the understanding of how these yardangs form,” he said.
More on the mysterious Great Sphinx origins

While the Great Sphinx of Giza has its mysteries — what it originally looked like and why it was made — it is believed that the 66-foot-tall (20-meter-tall) statue was carved out of a single piece of limestone.

The original theory that wind had shaped a yardang into the Sphinx’s formation was first featured in a 1981 Smithsonian Magazine article by El-Baz titled “Desert Builders Knew a Good Thing When They Saw It.”


Researchers at New York University's Applied Mathematics Laboratory created clay models of the Great Sphinx that incorporated harder inclusions. The team washed the models with a fast stream of water to represent the wind and its erosion effects. - NYU's Applied Mathematics Laboratory© Provided by CNN

The premise was based on leading work by the late planetary geologist Ronald Greeley, who had simulated wind tunnels to explore how wind erosion can shape structures in the desert, El-Baz told CNN in an email.

El-Baz said he did not believe this new study provided any more support to his original theory.

Salima Ikram, distinguished university professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, questioned altogether the idea that the Sphinx had started with a yardang.

“Once the Great Sphinx was carved, nature played a part in its further formation, but it is unlikely that the original form was based on a yardang (which are generally of mud — this is limestone) as there are significant quarry marks and working marks surrounding it,” said Ikram, who was not involved in the study, in an email.

“There is too much evidence of human intervention in the construction of the Great Sphinx to make the yardang theory feasible,” Ikram said.

The New York University researchers said their results suggest that Sphinx-like structures can form under fairly commonplace conditions, but their findings don’t resolve the mysteries behind yardangs and the Great Sphinx.

“It’s not so black and white. … No one says this is an entirely human carved thing and no one says it’s entirely nature carved. The question is how much was naturally existing and then further modified,” Ristroph told CNN. “What our (study) would do is tell you that much of the head base, the neck and the paws, much of that is possible to carve by nature, by erosion.”

Megalosaurus, the first ever dinosaur discovery

Story by By Katie Hunt, CNN

 • 

Huge fossilized bones that emerged from slate quarries in England’s Oxfordshire beginning in the late 1600s were immediately puzzling.

In a world where evolution and extinction were unknown concepts, the experts of the day cast around for an explanation. Perhaps, they thought, they belonged to a Roman war elephant or a giant human.

It wasn’t until 1824 that William Buckland, Oxford University’s first professor of geology, described and named the first known dinosaur, based on a lower jaw, vertebrae and limb bones found in those local quarries. The largest thigh bone was 2 feet, 9 inches long and nearly 10 inches in circumference.

Buckland named the creature the bones belonged to Megalosaurus, or great lizard, in a scientific paper that he presented to London’s newly formed Geological Society on February 20, 1824. From the shape of its teeth, he believed it was a carnivore more than 40 feet (12 meters) long with “the bulk of an elephant.” Buckland thought it was likely amphibious, living partially in land and water.

“In some ways he got a lot right. This was a group of extinct giant reptilian creatures.

This was a radical idea,” said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World.”

“We all grew up watching dinosaur cartoons and watching ‘Jurassic Park,’ with dinosaurs on our lunchbox and toys. But imagine a world where the word dinosaur doesn’t exist, where the concept of a dinosaur doesn’t exist, and you were the first people that realize this simply by looking at a few large bones from the earth.”


An illustration depicts geologist William Buckland teaching in an Oxford University lecture room on February 15, 1823. - The Metropolitan Museum of Art© Provided by CNN

The word dinosaur didn’t come into existence until 20 years later, coined by anatomist Richard Owen, founder of the Natural History Museum in London, based on shared characteristics he identified in his studies of Megalosaurus and two other dinosaurs, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus, which were first described in 1825 and 1833, respectively.


The Megalosaurus paper cemented Buckland’s professional reputation in the new field of geology, but its significance as the first scientific description of a dinosaur was only apparent in retrospect.

At the time, Megalosaurus was eclipsed in the public imagination by the discovery of complete fossils of giant marine reptiles such as the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur collected by paleontologist Mary Anning on England’s Dorset Coast. No complete skeleton of Megalosaurus has been found.


The Megalosaurus dinosaur statue in London's Crystal Palace Park that dates from 1854. At the time paleontologists thought the prehistoric creature walked on four legs. - Loop Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo© Provided by CNN

But Megalosaurus did make its impact on popular culture. Charles Dickens, who was friends with Owen, imagined meeting a Megalosaurus on the muddy streets of London in the opening of his 1852 novel, “Bleak House.”

It was also one of three model dinosaurs to go on display at London’s Crystal Palace in 1854, home to the world’s first dinosaur park. It’s still there today. While its head shape is largely correct, today we know that it was about 6 meters (about 20 feet) long and walked on two legs, not four.

Who was Buckland?

How Buckland developed his expertise as a geologist isn’t clear.

An ambitious and charismatic scholar, he read classics and theology at Oxford, graduating in 1804, and took a wide range of classes, including in anatomy, said Susan Newell, a historian and associate researcher at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. He was also in contact with other celebrated natural scientists of the time such as George Cuvier in France, who was famous for his work comparing living animals with fossils.

“(Buckland) was the first person who really started to think well, what is going on with all of these weird fossils coming up, just up the road in this quarry in Oxford, and he started paying local quarrymen to find (fossils and) … keep stuff for him,” Newell said.

“He started to piece together the jigsaw.”



An engraving of the Megalosaurus jaw based on drawings by Mary Morland from 1824's "Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield" by William Buckland. - The Picture Art Collection/Alamy© Provided by CNN

A year after his Megalosaurus paper was published, Buckland married his unofficial assistant, Mary Morland, who was a talented naturalist in her own right and the artist of the illustrations of Megalosaurus fossils that appeared in the groundbreaking paper.

Later in his career, Buckland recognized that most of the United Kingdom had once been covered in ice sheets after a trip to Switzerland, understanding that a period of glaciation had shaped the British landscape rather than a biblical flood.


Newell said Buckland’s scientific career ended prematurely, with him succumbing to some kind of mental breakdown that stopped him from teaching. He died in 1856 in an asylum in London.
What we’ve learned

For paleontologists, the 200-year anniversary of the first scientific naming of a dinosaur is an opportunity to take stock and look back at what the field has learned over the past two centuries.



Today, paleontologists believe that Megalosaurus would have walked on two legs. - Julien Behal/PA Wire/AP© Provided by CNN

Defined by their disappearance, dinosaurs were once thought to be evolutionary failures. In fact, dinosaurs survived and thrived for 165 million years — far longer than the roughly 300,000 years that modern humans have so far roamed the planet.

Today, around 1,000 species of dinosaurs have been named. And there are about 50 new dinosaur species discovered each year, according to Brusatte.

“Really, the science is still in the discovery phase. Yes, it’s 200 years old now, but we’ve only found a tiny fraction of the dinosaurs that have ever lived,” Brusatte said. “Birds today are the descendants of dinosaurs. There (are) over 10,000 species of birds that live just right now. And of course, dinosaurs lived for well over 150 million years. So do the math. There were probably thousands, if not millions, of different species of dinosaurs.”

In the 1990s, fossils unearthed in China definitively revealed that dinosaurs had feathers, confirming a long-held theory that they are the direct ancestors of the birds that flap around in backyards.

It’s not just amazing fossil discoveries that make the present a golden age of paleontology. New technology such as CT scanning and computational methods allow paleontologists to reconstruct and understand dinosaurs in far greater detail.

For example, in some feathered fossils, tiny structures called melanosomes that once contained pigment are preserved. By comparing the melanosomes with those of living birds, scientists can tell the possible original colors of the feathers.

There is still a lot to learn. It’s not completely clear how and why dinosaurs got quite so big, nor is it really known what noises the creatures might have made.

“I think it’s almost impossible for us to think back to a world where people did not know dinosaurs,” Brusatte said.

“However, there’s going to be things in the future where people will say how in 2024 did we not know that. (This anniversary) should give us a bit of perspective.”

London’s Natural History Museum and The Geological Society will hold special events in 2024 to mark the 200th anniversary of the naming of the first dinosaur.

Crystal Palace dinosaurs: how we rediscovered five missing sculptures from the famous park

70 million-year-old giant dinosaur skeleton found connected from skull to tail

Story by Taylor Nicioli, CNN • 

A chance discovery made in southern France has revealed a rare specimen — an almost complete dinosaur skeleton found connected from its hind skull to its tail.

The massive fossil came to light in May 2022, after now 25-year-old amateur paleontologist Damien Boschetto and his dog stumbled across something unusual while walking in a forest in Montouliers, France. Boschetto had noticed a cliff edge that had recently collapsed and decided to take a closer look, when he spotted an exposed bone sticking out of the ground, local media outlet France Bleu first reported on February 13.

The Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association at the Cruzy Museum, in collaboration with the French National Center for Scientific Research, identified the nearly 10-meter-long (32.8-foot-long) fossil as a Titanosaur skeleton upon excavation. Boschetto, who has been a member of the association for eight years, told CNN that while unearthing dinosaur remains is “always exciting and interesting for scientific research and the understanding of the ecosystems of that time,” finding the bones in their almost original anatomical position is what makes this find extraordinary.

“From a museography point of view, it will make it possible to present to the general public animals almost complete in anatomical positions, which is something great,” Boschetto added via email.


The massive fossil was discovered in May 2022 when a collapsed cliff edge had left a bone exposed. - Damien Boschetto© Provided by CNN

A group of history and archaeology enthusiasts created the Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association in 1975 to safeguard the heritage around the village of Cruzy, with several members becoming enlightened amateurs in paleontology due to the areas’ wealth of dinosaur fossils, said Jean-Marc Veyssières, a member of the group and one of the fossil preparers for this discovery. Today, the association is made up of inhabitants of the region, including a few scientists as well as students.

“The most exciting thing was to realize that we had at least one anatomically connected animal and that it was a titanosaur, a long-necked dinosaur,” said Veyssières in an email. “(Boschetto) is an enlightened enthusiast and curious about nature, he spends a lot of time surveying the region in search of new areas. … He became an expert on the Late Cretaceous fauna of our region.”

The association has been excavating the site, which Boschetto referred to as a bone bed, a term used by paleontologists to describe a dense area of animal bones and other fossilized remains, for the past two years. And the newly announced find was not Boschetto’s first.

The recently revealed 70% complete Titanosaur skeleton was retrieved during the excavation along with several fossils of various dinosaurs and other vertebrates, including some in anatomical connection and near complete. Other remains identified included those of a Rhabdodon — a herbivore, or plant-eater, like the Titanosaur — and fragments from skeletons of carnivores such as Theropods and crocodiles, according to Boschetto.

The Titanosaur skeleton currently resides in the Cruzy Museum’s laboratory, where it will be further studied, Veyssières said.


Damien Boschetto (left) and Jean-Marc Veyssières (right) are members of the Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association with the Cruzy Museum, where the fossil is now held. - Damien Boschetto© Provided by CNN

Titanosaur found intact

Researchers estimated the age of the newly discovered fossil to be around 70 to 72 million years old, but Titanosaurs roamed around on four legs from the Late Jurassic Epoch to the end of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 163.5 million to 66 million years ago. Titanosaurs belong to a larger group of dinosaurs known as sauropods, a family of long-necked herbivores that were some of the largest dinosaurs of their time, according to Britannica.

Remains of Titanosaur fossils are widely unearthed in Europe, but few are discovered in anatomical connection, Boschetto said. Finding a skeleton in this connected state suggests that the body was buried before it had entirely decomposed, leaving “some tissues connecting the bones to one another,” said Matthew Carrano, research geologist and curator of Dinosauria at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.

The completeness of the specimen will “make it easier to determine whether it’s a new species or a new specimen of a species that’s already known,” Carrano said in an email. “It will take time to learn all the details about this new specimen, but I’m sure it will provide important new information about this group of dinosaurs.”

The region in which Boschetto discovered the specimen is known to be rich in fossils of dinosaurs and other species living at the same time and is “building one of the largest collections of dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous in France,” he said. The association did not publicize the discovery until excavation was complete to protect the archaeological site, he added.

The association plans to continue research on the fossils and to further search the area, and the group’s members hope to obtain the funds to “create a large-scale museum that can accommodate and present these collections,” Boschetto said.

Alberta Health budget forecasts record number of private surgeries

Story by The Canadian Press

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Alberta Health has plans to boost the number of surgeries performed in the province in 2024 and is counting on a record number of procedures being contracted to private, for-profit facilities to meet its target.

Alberta’s 2024 budget includes $305 million to support approximately 310,000 operating room procedures. Alberta Health estimates between 60,000 and 65,000 of these publicly funded procedures will be performed by privately-owned chartered surgical facilities (CSFs), an increase of 27–37 per cent from the 47,400 surgeries performed in CSFs in 2022–23, the last full year for which publicly reported statistics are available.

How much of the $305 million budget will go directly to private facilities is unclear. Andrea Smith, press secretary for the Minister of Health, said in an email that the budgets for surgical initiatives vary on a number of factors, both in hospitals and at CSFs.

Andrew Longhurst, a health policy researcher at Simon Fraser University, has studied the impacts of the increased use for-profit surgical facilities on surgical capacity and wait times in Alberta, and said he is concerned the projected expansion of CSF patient volume will further constrain existing staffing resources.

“As you move that significant amount of volume into the chartered surgical facilities, you're going to be causing shortages around OR nursing and anaesthesia services. These are areas where we're in short supply in public hospitals,” Longhurst said.

“There's no question in my mind that it's going to have a really significant and detrimental effect on the ability of public hospitals to maintain their volumes. And it's going to make it pretty much impossible to increase their volumes in the way that they need to.”

In 2020, Alberta committed $400 million to outsourcing surgeries to private clinics through the Alberta Surgical Initiative (ASI), stating that this would free up space in existing hospitals and improve waiting times for all Albertans.

Longhurst’s research analyzed data from the first three years of the ASI, and found that rather than improving access, resources were diverted from public hospitals, increasing wait times and reducing overall surgical capacity.

According to data from Alberta Health Services, the number of hip replacements performed within the national benchmark wait time in Alberta has fallen from 65.5 per cent in 2019-20 to 42.9 per cent in 2022-23. Results for knee replacements declined from 61.5 per cent in 2019-20 to 32.1 per cent in 2022-23. The wait times for cataract surgeries, however, improved by 20 per cent during this same period.

The total provincial surgical volume decreased by 6 per cent between 2018-2019 and 2021-2022, according to Longhurst's research.

Longhurst said Alberta experienced this reduced surgical capacity because as more public dollars flow to encourage growth in the for-profit sector, there is also a movement of staff to CSFs. “You're not doubling or expanding the staffing resources that you have, you’re simply shifting them.”

Smith said the increase in wait times was due to the pandemic, which created a backlog of patients for surgeries requiring an overnight stay, such as hip and knee replacements.

The province remains committed to contacting more surgeries to CSFs and increasing the number of surgeries performed in public operating rooms, Smith said.

“CSFs have increased capacity to allow more surgeries to happen overall. Thousands of Albertans are now getting their publicly funded surgeries at these chartered surgical facilities which is freeing up operating rooms in hospitals to handle more complex surgeries,” she said.


“The number of surgeries performed in Alberta is increasing year-over-year. As of January 2024, the total number of surgeries performed at AHS sites and CSFs in 2023-24 was at 253,215.”

Smith also said wait times have been improved for both hip and knee replacements because of CSFs.

The total number of surgeries performed in 2018-19, before the pandemic, was 285,945. Data from 2022-23 shows that surgical volumes in Alberta are starting to recover from the pandemic, with a total of 292,500 procedures being performed in public and private facilities.

In recent years, the scope of surgeries able to be performed at CSFs has expanded to include more orthopaedic procedures and general surgeries, though they are generally contracted to perform less complex procedures involving healthier, low acuity patients.

Because this represents a limited pool of potential patients, Longhurst said he thinks the government will soon run into issues of having enough suitable patients to meet their goal of having 30 per cent of surgeries performed in private facilities.

"I think there's no question that this is ideologically motivated," he said.

“Unless they're moving towards these for-profit facilities becoming full-blown acute care facilities – which may be their vision, and I think there's reason enough to believe that that is their vision – I think they're going to run into the challenge of actually making good on the 60–65,000 cases that they want to be performed annually in these for-profit facilities.”

Longhurst said the weight of the research evidence shows the jurisdictions best able to improve surgical wait times have been those that make sustained funding commitments to public sector capacity "where the infrastructure already exists.

"There's a huge cost, both in dollar terms and in operational and administrative complexity, in building up a parallel for-profit delivery sector. And that's what we're seeing in Alberta. And it is coming at the expense of all of the time and resources within AHS and Alberta Health to be able to basically build a for-profit sector that can do what public hospitals can already do."

Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, St. Albert Gazette

Alberta post-secondary students and faculty demand more provincial funding for public education

Story by Carolyn Kury de Castillo

 

Concerns are being raised about the lack of funding that Alberta’s public post-secondary institutions are getting compared with private ones in the 2024 budget.

© Global News

Global News
Reaction to Alberta’s 2024 provincial budget
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Concerns are being raised about the lack of funding that Alberta’s public post-secondary institutions are getting compared with private ones in the 2024 budget.

The president of the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) said this year's budget provides a below-inflation increase in operational funding while throwing taxpayer money at private, for-profit career colleges.

At a press conference on Friday, Advanced Education Minister Rajan Sawhney announced that Budget 2024 will invest $55 million over three years to build a new multidisciplinary science hub at the University of Calgary.

That's a move supported by students and staff but the U of C Students' Union says it's not enough to compensate for the losses associated with the budget.

The U of C Students' Union says class sizes continue to grow, and the university is behind by hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and maintenance. The union also said Alberta's 2024 budget has cut per-capita spending on post-secondary funding by 7.3 per cent.

CAFA says the increase for public colleges and universities is far below inflation and growth while the government is increasing taxpayer support for for-profit colleges such as Makimi College.

"Our public institutions, our public universities are the way we maximize the value of our tax dollars and then saying to people you can do the same thing as the public but we're going to guarantee profit for you as well is just throwing good money after bad," said Dan O'Donnell, CAFA president.

A spokesperson for Alberta's Ministry of Advanced Education says Budget 2024 does not include direct funding to private career colleges.

"Budget 2024 includes nearly $394 million in net expense for private career colleges and student aid," said the ministry spokesperson in an email to Global News.

"You have to ask why would you bundle those two things together? It doesn't make much sense if your goal is to be transparent," O'Donnell said.

"These (public) institutions are starved," said Ricardo Acuña, executive director of the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta. "Whether it's direct funding to these institutions, or making it easier for people to get student loans to attend these institutions or grants or subsidies to attend, whatever envelope it comes down to - the direct result is public funding for a for-profit institution. That's problematic, especially when public institutions are being starved of ongoing funding."

The president of the University of Alberta said in an announcement that the university's provincial operating grant for the 2024- 25 academic year is the same amount it received in the last two budget cycles, during which inflation has increased by over 10 per cent.

With U of A applications up by 8 per cent last year, the university says there's an urgent need for additional funding to support domestic enrolment growth. But U of A president Bill Flanagan says this budget "did not include any new funding for domestic enrolment growth for any degree programs at Alberta's universities beyond the amounts previously announced in the existing Targeted Enrolment Expansion program."

O'Donnell said not everything in the budget was bad for the sector, pointing to $55 million allocated to the University of Calgary to increase enrolment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming, $26 million in capital funding along with $43 million in operational fundings to the University of Lethbridge to establish a Rural Medical Teaching School in collaboration with the University of Calgary.

Acuña says the Alberta government is prioritizing private institutions while at the same time telling public universities and institutions to find other ways to raise money.

"It seems like they got it backwards. We're telling public institutions to find ways to make their own money and we're giving more tax dollars to private institutions, for-profit institutions and it seems like we're heading in the wrong direction on both fronts," Acuña said.