Hundreds mourn Catholic priest and Indigenous peace activist killed in southern Mexico

RAÚL VERA and ISABEL MATEOS
Mon, October 21, 2024




People carry the coffin of slain Catholic priest and activist Marcelo Pérez prior to a mass at the main plaza in San Andrés Larráinzar, Chiapas state, Mexico, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Isabel Mateos)

SAN ANDRES LARRAINZAR, Mexico (AP) — Hundreds gathered Monday to mourn Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez, an activist for Indigenous peoples and farm laborers who was killed in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas.

It was a killing that many say was a tragedy foretold, in a state where drug cartels have caused thousands of people to flee their homes.

Mourners gathered in San Andres Larrainzar, near the city of San Cristobal de las Casas, where Pérez was killed on Sunday.


Pérez, a leading activist for peace in the violence-torn state, was from San Andrés Larrainzar. A mass in his honor Monday was held in Spanish and Tzotzil, the Indigenous language he spoke.

Pérez, 50, had often received threats, but nonetheless continued to work as a peace activist. Human rights advocates said Pérez did not receive the government protection he needed.

“For years, we insisted that the Mexican government should address the threats and aggressions against him, but they never implemented measures to guarantee his life, security and well-being,” The Fray Bartolome de las Casas human rights center wrote.

While there was no immediate information on the killers — President Claudia Sheinbaum only said that “investigations are being carried out” — Rev. Pérez's peace and mediation efforts may have angered one of the two drug cartels that are currently fighting for control of Chiapas.

The state is a lucrative route for smuggling both drugs and migrants.

“Father Marcelo Pérez was the subject of constant threats and aggressions on the part of organized crime groups,” according to the rights center, adding that his killing “occurred in the context of a serious escalation of violence against the public in all the regions of Chiapas.”

For at least the last two years, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have been engaged in bloody turf battles that involve killing whole families, and forcing villagers to take sides in the dispute. Hundreds of Chiapas residents have had to flee to neighboring Guatemala for their own safety.

“They should look for an intelligent way to disarm those groups,” said Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, who once served as the bishop for the area. “They shouldn't wait for people to file complaints, and people are going to file complaints because their lives are at risk.”

Together with continued drug violence in the northern state of Sinaloa, and the army killings of six migrants earlier this month, the killing of Pérez was another embarrassment for the government.

Sheinbaum took office Oct. 1 and has pledged to follow the policy of her predecessor and mentor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of not confronting the drug cartels. The policy has failed to significantly reduce violence.

“This is a reflection of the whole country,” Cardinal Arizmendi said following the mass for Pérez. “They shouldn't say everything is fine in Mexico. Please.” he continued. “This strategy has not worked.”

The state prosecutors’ office said Rev. Pérez was shot dead by two gunmen when he was in his van, just after he had finished celebrating Mass.

He served in the community for two decades and was known as a negotiator in conflicts in a mountainous region of Chiapas where crime, violence and land disputes are rife. Pérez also led several marches against violence, which has brought him several death threats.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said Pérez was the seventh human rights activist killed in Mexico so far in 2024.

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Mexican priest who spoke out against cartel violence killed

Vanessa Buschschlüter - BBC News
Mon, October 21, 2024 

The murder of Father Marcelo Pérez has caused outrage in Chiapas [Reuters]


Gunmen in Mexico have shot dead a Catholic priest who was an outspoken advocate for indigenous rights and who had condemned the violence plaguing his community.

Father Marcelo Pérez was killed after celebrating Mass in the southern state of Chiapas on Sunday, the prosecutor's office said.

The Jesuit priest had spent almost two decades fighting for the rights of the Tzotzil indigenous group, of which he was a member.

The Jesuit Order said his murder should not be "minimised" as an isolated case - insisting it was part of the wave of violence that organised crime groups have unleashed in Chiapas.

"Father Marcelo has been a symbol of resistance and support in Chiapas, defencing the dignity, the rights of the people, and the construction of an authentic peace," the Jesuit Order said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said his murder was being investigated and would not go unpunished.

Mexico's bishops' conference described Father Marcelo as one of the "prophetic voices" that had fought for peace, and said justice in Chiapas had been silenced.

There were emotional scenes at the wake for the popular priest [AFP]

The priest was killed by two men on a motorcycle, who opened fire on his vehicle in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

The incident happened early on Sunday as Father Marcelo was returning to his parish after saying Mass in the Cuxtitali neighbourhood of the city.

He had been transferred to San Cristóbal de Las Casas after receiving death threats in the rural parish where he had previously worked.

The priest had tried to negotiate an end to the violence caused by clashes between a criminal gang and a vigilante group.

In an interview last month, he had described the southern state of Chiapas as "a time bomb".

"There are many [people who have] disappeared, many who have been kidnapped, many who have been murdered because of the presence of organised crime here," he said as he was leading a protest march he described as a "pilgrimage".

Chiapas has seen a spike in violence over the past year, with the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel fighting for control of the area.

The criminal groups extort migrants who cross the southern state on their way north to Mexico's border with the United States.

Communities in the region have been hard hit by the violence, sometimes having to hide in their homes for days as shots ring out outside.

But the targeted murder of an outspoken human rights advocate is seen as a dangerous escalation of the violence that has been plaguing the community for months.

Ancient Peruvian Throne Room an Intricate Scene of a Powerful Female

Tim Newcomb
Mon, October 21, 2024 

Ancient Peruvian Throne Room for Female LeaderDEA / G. DAGLI ORTI - Getty Images


Archaeologists found ancient, pillared halls in Peru’s Nepena Valley that include a finely painted throne room depicting a powerful woman.


Remnants of hair in the throne room indicates that the woman could have been a seventh-century leader of Pañamarca.


If that’s true, the discovery of an ancient throne room built for a queen specifically would be the first in the country’s history.

A team of archaeologists working on the Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca research project at the Moche site in the Nepena Valley of north coastal Peru recently discovered a throne room filled with imagery and physical evidence that it was used by a high-status female leader. While many the colorful murals of ancient Pañamarca have long been well-known to archaeologists, this is the first time that researchers exploring this place have found evidence of a female ruler.


Some may claim that the decorations within the room show only the celebration of a mythical woman—whether a priestess, goddess, or queen. But according to a statement written by the team, erosion of the back of the stone throne present in the room and discoveries of fine threads, greenstone beads, and human hair all point to a real-life seventh-century A.D. female leader of Pañamarca.


“The most exciting thing is the traces of wear,” said archaeologist Jose Ochatoma, according to Reuters. “There is not a surface in this area that is bare. Everything is painted and finely decorated with mythological scenes and characters.”

The site also prominently features several displays of Moche iconography from the period—scenes in what project director Jessica Ortiz Zevallos called the “Hall of the Moche Imagery” feature four different depictions of a powerful woman. In one instance, she is receiving visitors in procession and, in another, she is seated upon a throne.

The art painted on the walls and pillars of the throne room (and the throne itself) includes representations of a crescent moon, the sea and its creatures, and the arts of spinning and weaving. There’s also a rare scene of an entire workshop of women spinning and weaving while a procession of men carries textiles and “the female leader’s crown, complete with her braids.”

“Pañamarca continues to surprise us,” Lisa Trever, professor of art history at Columbia University, said in a statement, “not only for the ceaseless creativity of its painters but also because their works are overturning our expectations of gender roles in the ancient Moche world.”

An additional discovery at the site revealed what the team has dubbed The Hall of the Braided Serpents, built with wide square pillars. These pillars feature paintings of serpents intertwining with human legs—another completely new motif in Moche art.

“We are discovering an iconography that has not been seen before in the pre-Hispanic world,” Ochatoma told Reuters.

Throughout the hall, images feature warriors, anthropomorphized weapons, and even a large monster chasing a man. “Perched above the plaza, this hall offered a prominent position—almost like box seats at a theatre or stadium—from which to observe the goings-on down below, while it also provided private spaces for its privileged occupants,” Michele Koons, archaeologist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, said in a statement.

The Pañamarca architectural site—located atop a granite hill and featuring adobe platforms and plazas—was first discovered in the 1950s, and the latest research program has been ongoing since 2018. The latest finds from 1,300 years ago continue to reveal new details about the Moche culture, which pre-dates the Inca Empire to the south.

“We often say that Pañamarca was a place of unprecedented creativity,” Trever told Artnet, “and every season, it seems like that point becomes even more true.”

SPACE/COSMOS

Boeing-made satellite breaks up in space

Matt Oliver
Tue, October 22, 2024 

An artist’s impression of Boeing’s Intelstat IS-33e satellite, which was kept in geostationary orbit to provide telecoms, broadcasting and other services to customers back on Earth

A Boeing-made satellite has exploded in space, dealing a fresh blow to the crisis-hit aerospace company.

The IS-33e satellite, which is owned and operated by Intelsat, was kept in geostationary orbit to provide telecoms, broadcasting and other services to customers back on Earth.

However, on Saturday an “anomaly” caused it to unexpectedly break apart, a statement from Intelsat said, bringing a halt to communications.


The incident is the latest embarrassment for Boeing, which has been battling a reputational crisis since a major safety failure on one of its 737 Max 9 passenger planes in January.

In its space division, executives at the company were also left red-faced after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed insufficiently safe to return two astronauts to Earth from the International Space Station this summer.

Boeing has been battling a reputational crisis since a panel blew out mid-flight on one of its 737 Max 9 planes in January - NTSB/via REUTERS

After confirming the satellite incident over the weekend, Intelsat has now said it believes IS-33e is a “total loss”.

The US Space Force separately said it was tracking some 20 pieces of debris from the craft in orbit.

It said officials had “observed no immediate threats” but were continuing to monitor the situation.

Intelsat said customers who relied on the satellite’s services were being transferred to other assets or satellites operated by third parties.

In a statement, the company added: “We are coordinating with the satellite manufacturer, Boeing, and government agencies to analyse data and observations.

“A failure review board has been convened to complete a comprehensive analysis of the cause of the anomaly.”

The IS-33e satellite had suffered problems previously, according to the website Space News, with issues concerning its primary thruster delaying it entering service in January 2017.

Further problems with the craft’s thrusters while tests were being conducted in orbit then reduced the satellite’s planned 15-year lifespan by three and a half years.

IS-33e was designed and manufactured by Boeing, based on the company’s 702 communications satellite family.

Boeing has been contacted for comment.

A Fascinating Theory About a Ring of Asteroids Around Earth Has Some Wild Implications for Evolution

Riley Black
Mon, October 21, 2024 



Like many of us, Earth bears old pockmarks. Our planet’s crust has a band of ancient craters that formed around 465 million years ago. The divots were created at a time when animals in the seas were taking on a broad array of new forms, building complex ecosystems from plankton to jawless fish to spaceship-like filter feeders. Back then, those strange invertebrates might have been able to look up through the nighttime shallows and see the glow of Earth’s very own ring, which may have been something like Saturn’s.

Spotting the Milky Way on a clear night is awe-inspiring enough. I can only be envious of the early fish and archaic crabs that might have seen Earth’s temporary band of spinning debris. That band, which Monash University planetary scientist Andrew Tomkins and colleagues are arguing existed in a new paper, may have been the result of an asteroid’s passing just close enough to our prehistoric planet to break up into innumerable pieces. (Unlike Saturn’s ring, it wouldn’t have been composed of so much ice.) The small, iron-rich rocks stayed in orbit for a time, but—as expressed by my favorite new piece of technical jargon—“deorbited” around 465 million years ago, some of them crashing down into Earth. And although the band of ancient craters is the only physical evidence such a ring ever existed, life on Earth likely recorded the geological wonder too.

The new hypothesis that there was such a ring is still in its early stages, and not every proposed ring stays put in our scientific visions of the past. Geologists previously suggested that Earth had a ring during the Eocene, about 35.5 million years ago, but the idea had more to do with searching for a possible cause for ancient climate shifts than with hard evidence from the rock record. It’s possible that the Ordovician craters in Earth’s rock record were created by another astronomical phenomenon, like asteroid debris forming a miniature moon that then broke apart. Whatever transpired, we know that some unusual event showered chunks of rocks across our planet’s surface around 465 million years ago, a little sprinkle of space making its way to Earth.

Let’s assume that the provenance of those rocks was a ring, and follow through the consequences of such a debris field: When Earth wore a ring around its middle, it would have affected how sunlight reached the planet’s surface. The ring probably would have shaded the hemispheres of the planet experiencing winter, while slightly increasing summer heat on the other half, Tomkins and co-authors suggest. Vast quantities of dust from the asteroid and the impacts of the smaller pieces might have affected sunlight and global climate too, perhaps helping to explain why Earth became an icehouse between 444 and 463 million years ago. And as we well know from our present habit of turning an icehouse climate into a greenhouse one, an altered climate dramatically affects life on our planet.

During the time Earth may have gained and lost its ring, life was going through an incredible evolutionary burst. Paleontologists know this as the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. Think of it as the sequel to the more famous, earlier Cambrian explosion, which saw the rapid origin of many different kinds of animal bodies and groups of living things in the seas. The GOBE was the following period’s expansion of those previous themes, everything from algae to early clams and fish evolving into new forms and creating ecosystems comparable to what we see in today’s oceans. It was the assembly of what we might think of as modern ocean ecosystems, a rich base of plankton allowing many other forms of life to thrive.

Working out what caused the GOBE is tricky if not impossible, given that this is not Sim Earth and we can’t simply replay different scenarios to see what fits our hypothesis best. Still, perhaps Earth’s ring and its climate consequences had a significant influence on Earth’s life, and was the sudden global shift that nudged life to evolve in different ways. And whether a ring, a miniature moon, or some other scenario, spattering our planet with space rocks may have created conditions that set up what we think of as “modern” oceans.

Half a century ago, such ideas were received by the scientific community as speculative at best and fanciful at worst. Evolution had usually been thought of in reference to earthbound processes. (It still is, in most cases.) But today, we can consider how a near-miss asteroid and a possible ring around Earth affected life in the distant past because we know that space debris had a deep impact on life at another time. Long after the GOBE, about 66 million years ago, when ecosystems on land were as full of varied living things as the seas, a 6-mile-wide asteroid struck Earth at a place we now call Chicxulub, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The heat pulse created by falling debris from the strike virtually wiped out every nonbird dinosaur on the planet within a day, soot and dust filled with sunlight-reflecting compounds then creating a global impact winter that lasted at least three years. The world didn’t just lose almost all the dinosaurs; it also lost the flying pterosaurs, the seagoing mosasaurs, and reef-building clams the size of a toilet seat, in addition to mass extinctions of mammals, lizards, birds, and even plankton. Just this year, planetary scientists identified the asteroid as a carbonaceous chondrite, an iron-heavy chunk of rock left over from our solar system’s formation that was pulled onto a collision course with Earth in the most catastrophic million-to-one shot of all time.

For all the destruction that space rock caused, it cleared the way for so much other life. Without that asteroid, we wouldn’t be here or recognize the planet we now call home.

Primates were already around by the time the asteroid struck, in a Northern Hemisphere spring 66 million years ago. When they emerged from their hiding places in the aftermath of the first day and scrounged for food in the following years of darkness, the world was fundamentally changed. Angiosperms, or flowering plants, grew back faster and denser than the previously ubiquitous conifer relatives had been. Iron from the immense asteroid was distributed in the dusty debris and enriched soils across the planet, allowing Earth to host the very first rainforests in the tropics. And without hulking dinosaurs to plow down vegetation and keep forests relatively open, plants grew dense into multitiered habitats that acted as the crucible of mammal evolution. It was here that our ancestors, among many other forms of life, found themselves in a world of thick, novel habitats. Dinosaurs were out of the way, but competition for space and food among these smaller creatures nudged surviving species into new forms. Had the asteroid missed or even struck a different place on the planet, then the world would have continued to be covered in forests of resin-oozing monkey puzzle trees and ginkgoes, and a place where dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes proliferated while mammals thrived only at diminutive size.

The evolution of Earth’s life is often discussed and debated in terms of what’s happening on our planet. Life adjusts according to cooperation and competition, climate change and human impact. But Earth exists as part of a solar system, galaxy, and universe too—and sometimes other parts of our universe come to visit us. Earth isn’t an isolated terrarium, and life upon it has been as influenced by impacts and near misses as by continental drift. We can’t answer why birds are the only dinosaurs still alive, or perhaps even how our oceans built up their complex ecosystems, without speaking of asteroids and their consequences. Speeding rocks have altered life’s unfolding so unpredictably that it’s often easier to write them off as a rare and unusual part of the story. We’re starting to see evidence otherwise. We owe our very existence to an asteroid, after all, our story connected more than 9 billion miles away to the cusp of our solar system. It’s bittersweet, owing even the possibility of my existence to a cold chunk of rock that took away the dinosaurs I wish I could see alive.


Webb telescope spots extremely bright objects. They shouldn't be there.

Mashable
Tue, October 22, 2024 

An artist's depiction shows how a quasar, which is the extremely bright core of a galaxy, unleashes torrents of energy from its central black hole.


Scientists didn't build the James Webb Space Telescope simply to find answers. They've sought new questions and mysteries.

And they've just found another.

Using the Webb telescope to peer back into the earliest periods of the universe, researchers spotted a handful of some of the brightest objects in the cosmos — quasars — adrift in the empty voids of space, isolated from other galaxies. This is strange. Quasars are black holes at galactic centers, millions to billions times more massive than the sun, that shoot potent bursts of energy into space (from material falling toward or rapidly spinning around black holes). The prevailing, and logical, theory was that such massive, hungry objects could only form in regions of dense matter.

But that's not always the case.

"Contrary to previous belief, we find on average, these quasars are not necessarily in those highest-density regions of the early universe. Some of them seem to be sitting in the middle of nowhere," Anna-Christina Eilers, a physicist at MIT who led the research, said in a statement. "It’s difficult to explain how these quasars could have grown so big if they appear to have nothing to feed from."

SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.

The research was recently published in a science journal called the Astrophysical Journal.

In the image below, you can see one of these isolated quasars, circled in red. Astronomers expect to find quasars amid regions flush with other galaxies. There, bounties of cosmic matter could support the creation of such giant and luminous objects. (In fact, "a quasar’s light outshines that of all the stars in its host galaxy combined," NASA explains.)

An isolated quasar in deep space, circled in red.

An isolated quasar in deep space, circled in red. Credit: Christina Eilers / EIGER team

In this research, astronomers endeavored to view some of the oldest objects in the universe, created some 600 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. For perspective, our solar system wouldn't form for another 8.5 billion years or so.

The Webb telescope, which orbits 1 million miles from Earth, captures profoundly faint, stretched-out light as it existed eons ago. This light is just reaching us now.

"It’s just phenomenal that we now have a telescope that can capture light from 13 billion years ago in so much detail," Eilers said. "For the first time, JWST enabled us to look at the environment of these quasars, where they grew up, and what their neighborhood was like."

"It’s just phenomenal that we now have a telescope that can capture light from 13 billion years ago in so much detail."

This latest cosmic quandary is not just about how these quasars formed in isolation, but how they formed so rapidly. "The main question we’re trying to answer is, how do these billion-solar-mass black holes form at a time when the universe is still really, really young? It’s still in its infancy," Eilers said.

Although the Webb telescope is designed to peer through the thick clouds of dust and gas in the universe, the researchers do say it's possible that these enigmatic quasars are in fact surrounded by galaxies — but the galaxies are shrouded. To find out, more observation with Webb is necessary.

An artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope observing the cosmos 1 million miles from Earth.

An artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope observing the cosmos 1 million miles from Earth. Credit: NASA-GSFC / Adriana M. Gutierrez (CI Lab)
The Webb telescope's powerful abilities

The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal new insights about the early universe. It's also examining intriguing planets in our galaxy, along with the planets and moons in our solar system.

Here's how Webb is achieving unparalleled feats, and likely will for decades to come:

- Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two-and-a-half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. The telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. "We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.

- Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that's visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.

"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.

- Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrographs that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be they gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb looks at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find?

"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.

Already, astronomers have successfully found intriguing chemical reactions on a planet 700 light-years away, and have started looking at one of the most anticipated places in the cosmos: the rocky, Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST solar system.

NASA captures star duo spraying plasma a quarter-trillion miles

Mashable
Mon, October 21, 2024 

The Hubble Space Telescope has been monitoring the binary star system R Aquarii.


New images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope demonstrate how a withered star remnant is only mostly dead — that is until a bloated nearby star reanimates it, a la Frankenstein.

The legendary observatory has monitored a double star system about 700 light-years away from Earth for more than 30 years, capturing how it dims and brightens over time as a result of strong pulses from the primary star. The binary, composed of a white dwarf star and a red giant star, has a caustic relationship, releasing tangled streams of glowing gas into the cosmos like an erratic lawn sprinkler.

Astronomers have dubbed this toxic pair in the constellation Aquarius a "stellar volcano" for how it sprays streams of glowing gas some 248 billion miles in space. For comparison, that's 24 times farther than the diameter of our solar system.

NASA is watching the stars to study how they recycle elements into the universe through nuclear energy.

"The plasma is shooting into space over 1 million miles per hour – fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 15 minutes!" NASA said in a statement. "The filaments are glowing in visible light because they are energized by blistering radiation from the stellar duo."

SEE ALSO: This nova is on the verge of exploding. You could see it any day now.

White dwarf star swinging close to red giant star

When a white dwarf star swings close to a red giant star, it draws away hydrogen. Credit: NASA Goddard illustration

The binary star system, known collectively as R Aquarii, is a special type of double star, called symbiotic, and it's the closest such pair to Earth. In this system, an elderly red giant, bloated and dying, and a white dwarf, the shriveled core of a dead medium-sized star, are orbiting each other.

The big star is over 400 times larger than the sun and varies dramatically in brightness over a 400-day period. At its peak, the red giant is 5,000 times brighter than the sun. Like the big star in R Aquarii, the sun is expected to bloat into a red giant in about 5 billion years.

When the white dwarf in R Aquarii gets close to its hulking companion along its 44-year orbit, the dead star steals stellar material away with gravity, causing hydrogen gas to heap onto its cool surface. That process makes the corpse rise from the dead, so to speak, warming up and eventually igniting like a bomb.


NASA and the European Space Agency created the above timelapse video of R Aquarii using Hubble images that spanned 2014 to 2023.

This thermonuclear explosion is called a "nova" — not to be confused with a supernova, the obliteration of an enormous star before it collapses into a black hole or neutron star. The nova doesn't destroy the white dwarf — rather, the explosion merely causes it to spew more elements, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and iron, back into space.

This year scientists have been on the edge of their seats, waiting for a nova to emerge from T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB, a binary star system about 3,000 light-years away in the Milky Way. This particular nova, which should be visible to the naked eye, is intriguing because it experiences periodic outbursts. Experts have determined it detonates about every 80 years.

A few months ago, experts believed the white dwarf would go nova sometime before September. Curiously, that sudden brightening hasn't happened yet.


"Recurrent novae are unpredictable and contrarian," said Koji Mukai, a NASA astrophysicist, in a June statement. "When you think there can’t possibly be a reason they follow a certain set pattern, they do — and as soon as you start to rely on them repeating the same pattern, they deviate from it completely."

These events are critical to understand because of how important they are for generating and distributing the ingredients for new stars, planets, and life. And this is what astronomer Carl Sagan meant when he said humans are made of "star stuff." The same substances that make our bodies were literally forged within the cores of stars, then flung through the cosmos when the stars burst.

R Aquarii blasts glowing jets that twist up and out following strong magnetic fields. The plasma seems to loop back onto itself, weaving an enormous spiral.

 Mega meteorite tore up seabed and boiled Earth's oceans

Georgina Rannard - Climate and science reporter
Mon, October 21, 2024 

The meteorite was 40-60km in diameter and left a crater 500km across [Getty Images]


A huge meteorite first discovered in 2014 caused a tsunami bigger than any in known human history and boiled the oceans, scientists have discovered.

The space rock, which was 200 times the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, smashed into Earth when our planet was in its infancy three billion years ago.

Carrying sledge hammers, scientists hiked to the impact site in South Africa to chisel off chunks of rock to understand the crash.

The team also found evidence that massive asteroid impacts did not bring only destruction to Earth - they helped early life thrive.

“We know that after Earth first formed there was still a lot of debris flying around space that would be smashing into Earth,” says Prof Nadja Drabon from Harvard university, lead author of the new research.

“But now we have found that life was really resilient in the wake of some of these giant impacts, and that it actually bloomed and and thrived,” she says.

The meteorite S2 was much larger than the space rock we are most familiar with. The one that led to the dinosaurs’ extinction 66 million years ago was about 10km wide, or almost the height of Mount Everest.

But S2 was 40-60km wide and its mass was 50-200 times greater.

It struck when Earth was still in its early years and looked very different. It was a water world with just a few continents sticking out of the sea. Life was very simple - microorganisms composed of single cells.

Nadja and her colleagues went to the Eastern Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa to collect rock samples [Nadja Drabon]

The impact site in Eastern Barberton Greenbelt is one of the oldest places on Earth with remnants of a meteorite crash.

Prof Drabon travelled there three times with her colleagues, driving as far as possible into the remote mountains before hiking the rest of the way with backpacks.

Rangers accompanied them with machine guns to protect them against wild animals like elephants or rhinos, or even poachers in the national park.

They were looking for spherule particles, or tiny fragments of rock, left behind by impact. Using sledge hammers, they collected hundreds of kilograms of rock and took them back to labs for analysis.

Prof Drabon stowed the most precious pieces in her luggage.

"I usually get stopped by security, but I give them a big spiel about how exciting the science is and then they get really bored and let me through," she says.

The team travelled with rangers who could protect them from wild animals like elephants or rhinos [Nadja Drabon]

The team have now re-constructed just what the S2 meteorite did when it violently careened into Earth. It gouged out a 500km crater and pulverised rocks that ejected at incredibly fast speeds to form a cloud that circled around the globe.

“Imagine a rain cloud, but instead of water droplets coming down, it's like molten rock droplets raining out of the sky,” says Prof Drabon.

A huge tsunami would have swept across the globe, ripped up the sea floor, and flooded coastlines.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami would have paled in comparison, suggests Prof Drabon.

All that energy would have generated massive amounts of heat that boiled the oceans causing up to tens of metres of water to evaporate. It would also have increased air temperatures by up to 100C.

The skies would have turned black, choked with dust and particles. Without sunlight penetrating the darkness, simple life on land or in shallow water that relied on photosynthesis would have been wiped out.

The team of geologists analysed rock showing evidence of ripped up seafloor [Nadja Drabon]

These impacts are similar to what geologists have found about other big meteorite impacts and what was suspected for S2.

But what Prof Drabon and her team found next was surprising. The rock evidence showed that the violent disturbances churned up nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fed simple organisms.

“Life was not only resilient, but actually bounced back really quickly and thrived,” she says.

“It’s like when you brush your teeth in the morning. It kills 99.9% of bacteria, but by the evening they're all back, right?” she says.

The new findings suggest that the big impacts were like a giant fertiliser, sending essential ingredients for life like phosphorus around the globe.

The tsunami sweeping the planet would also have brought iron-rich water from the depths to the surface, giving early microbes extra energy.

The findings add to a growing view among scientists that early life was actually helped by the violent succession of rocks striking Earth in its early years, Prof Drabon says.

“It seems that life after the impact actually encountered really favourable conditions that allowed it to bloom,” she explains.

The findings are published in the scientific journal PNAS.


Ancient meteorite was 'giant fertilizer bomb' for life on Earth

Mon, October 21, 2024 





Small spherules are seen in rock from a region called the Barberton Greenstone Belt in northeastern South Africa

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms. But that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet.

One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale. But, as new research shows, that disaster actually may have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as "a giant fertilizer bomb" for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the time, providing access to the key nutrients phosphorous and iron.

Researchers assessed the effects of this meteorite impact using evidence from ancient rocks in a region in northeastern South Africa called the Barberton Greenstone Belt. They found ample signs - mostly from the geochemical signature of preserved organic material but also from fossils of mats of marine bacteria - that life bounced back with aplomb.

"Life not only recovered quickly once conditions returned to normal within a few years to decades, it actually thrived," said Harvard University geologist Nadja Drabon, lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Earth was a much different place during the Paleoarchean Era when this occurred, and meteorite impacts were larger and more frequent.

"At this time, Earth was something of a water world, with limited emergence of volcanoes and continental rocks. There was essentially no oxygen gas in the atmosphere and oceans, and no cells with nuclei," Harvard geologist and study co-author Andrew Knoll said.

The meteorite was a type called a carbonaceous chondrite that is rich in carbon and also contains phosphorus. Its diameter was approximately 23-36 miles (37-58 km), Drabon said, making it about 50-200 times the mass of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants.

"The effects of the impact would have been quick and ferocious. The impactor hit with so much energy that it and whatever sediment or rock it hit vaporized. This rock vapor cloud and dust ejected from the crater would have circled the globe and turned the sky black within hours," Drabon said.

"The impact likely occurred in the ocean, initiating a tsunami that swept across the globe, ripping up the sea floor and inundating coastlines. Lastly, a lot of the impact energy would get transferred into heat, meaning that the atmosphere started heating up so much that the upper layer of the oceans started boiling," Drabon added.

It probably would have taken a few years to decades for the dust to settle and for the atmosphere to cool enough for the water vapor to return to the ocean, Drabon said. Microbes depending on sunlight and those in shallow waters would have been decimated.

But the meteorite would have delivered a large amount of phosphorous, a nutrient for microbes crucial for the molecules central to storing and conveying genetic information. The tsunami also would have mixed iron-rich deep waters into shallower waters, creating an environment ideal for many types of microbes because iron provides them with an energy source.

"Imagine these impacts to be giant fertilizer bombs," Drabon said.

"We think of meteorite impacts as being disastrous and detrimental to life - the best example being the Chicxulub impact (at Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula) that led to the extinction of not only the dinosaurs but also of 60-80% of animal species on Earth," Drabon said. "But 3.2 billion years ago, life was a lot simpler."

"Microorganisms are relatively simple, versatile, and they reproduce at fast rates," Drabon said.

The evidence of the impact included chemical signatures of the meteorite, small spherical structures formed from rock melted by the impact, and chunks of seabed mixed with other debris churned up by the tsunami in sedimentary rock.

"Early life was resilient in the face of a giant impact," Drabon said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

 Smallest known dinosaur egg found in China sets new record

Vishwam Sankaran
Tue, October 22, 2024 

Smallest known dinosaur egg found in China sets new record


Scientists say fossil dinosaur eggs unearthed at a construction site in China are the smallest ever found, providing new insights into the evolution of the extinct reptile.

The six eggs, fossilised into a lump, were discovered in 2021 in China’s Ganzhou region, which boasts one of the richest deposits of fossilised eggs from a range of ancient reptiles including dinosaurs.

But the fossil eggs found previously in the region were relatively large in size.


After three years of analysis, scientists obtained the overall image of the small eggshells found in 2021 and the fossilised creatures inside them.

The analysis, detailed last week in the journal Historical Biology, confirms that the creatures in the eggs are dinosaurs that roamed the region around 80 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous era.

“We report a partial egg clutch with six complete small eggs from the Upper Cretaceous Tangbian Formation of Ganzhou City,” the study says.

The smallest of the eggs is only about 29mm in length. The previously known smallest dinosaur egg was about 45mm by 40mm by 34mm.

New dinosaur egg fossils discovered in China’s Ganzhou (China University of Geosciences)

The thickness, pores and other features of the eggshells from 2021 are unlike those of any other known for this class of dinosaurs.

This suggests they were laid by a new species from the group of four-legged dinosaurs called theropods. “The egg morphology and eggshell microstructure support it to be the smallest known non-avian theropod egg up to date,” the new study states.

The eggs are now classified in a new category called Minioolithus ganzhouensis, named after the Chinese city they were found in.

“This discovery increases the diversity of dinosaur eggs in Late Cretaceous and is significant for our understanding of the evolution of theropods in the Late Cretaceous,” the study notes.

Researchers plan to continue studying the site where the fossil eggs were found to understand the nature of the dinosaur that laid them as well as how these dinosaurs built their nests.

Tiny fossil tracks unearthed reveal new ways dinosaurs used wings

Vishwam Sankaran
Tue, October 22, 2024

Tiny fossil tracks unearthed reveal new ways dinosaurs used wings


Scientists uncovered strange fossil footprints of a tiny bird-sized feathered dinosaur in South Korea, a discovery that could shed new light on the origin of flight.

The dinosaur, named Dromaeosauriformipes rarus, was a “dinky” two-toed raptor about the size of a modern sparrow, scientists from the University of Maryland in the US said.

The scientists were perplexed by the fossil footprints, which indicated that the dinosaur had giant long strides. “These tracks were a puzzle because their footprints are so tiny but they’re so far apart,” palaeontologist Thomas Holtz, who was part of the team that made the discovery, said.

The discovery was detailed in the journal PNAS.

The dinosaur did not merely run on land but used a strange mechanism that likely paved the way for flight as seen in modern birds.

An artistic rendering of Dromaeosauriformipes rarus (Julius Csotonyi)

There is evidence that the dinosaur flapped its feathered arms to achieve lift, allowing it to travel faster than if it had relied solely on the strength of its legs.

This form of movement, called “flap running”, was somewhere between running and flying and provided the dinosaur with enough force to lift off the ground in bursts, the study noted.

While the force from the movement would have enabled the dinosaur, an ancestor of modern birds, to likely run up a tree, it fell short of full-powered flight, scientists said.

“We can now move past the debate about whether pre-avian dinosaurs used their arms to help them move before flight evolved and start to uncover missing details such as which species had these abilities and when and to what extent they were developed,” Michael Pittman, another author of the study, said.

The researchers initially suspected the fossil footprints could have been made by a dinosaur with long, stilt-like legs akin to a “a Dr Seuss character”.

They also tested the theory that the animal could have just been “extremely fast”.

After considering the dinosaur’s hip height, they estimated that the speed needed to achieve the long strides would be about 10.5 metres per second.

This is more than the speed of any living running animal, including ostrich and cheetah, making it “highly improbable” the footprints were left by any of them, the researchers said.

Likely path taken by dinosaur D rarus as it left footprints (Alexander Dececchi et al PNAS)

They concluded that the trackway was produced at lower speeds with the dinosaur elongating its stride length using the force generated by the flapping of its feathered arms.

The unique footprints, scientists said, were left “in the midst” of the dinosaur taking off or landing.

“Thus the origin of flight may not be a simply binary of ‘can or cannot’ but a spectrum,” the study said.

“It is kind of like when a plane is coming down and bounces a little bit on the runway before slowing down,” Dr Holtz explained.

The latest research could inspire a closer look at similar dinosaur trackways in Bolivia or Madagascar or Australia. “There’s no reason to suspect these trackways were only in East Asia during the early Cretaceous, so we are hoping that people will look at their footprint slabs and find something else,” Dr Holtz said.

Historical film about family's backcountry trek through the Yukon rescued from obscurity

CBC
Mon, October 21, 2024 

Ruth Albee and her children Jo Evelyn, 5, and Billy, 8, in the Yukon in 1940. The Albee family's months-long trek on foot through the Yukon backcountry that year was chronicled in a film, 'Family Afoot in the Yukon,' that has largely languished in obscurity for decades. (Submitted by Bob and Marty Albee - image credit)


For Bob Albee, it was an unexpected and moving experience — to sit in a small theatre in Whitehorse, watching his now-deceased parents and siblings on screen, in a decades-old film that had almost been lost to time.

"I had tears in my eyes," Albee said, following the well-attended screening last week.

"The joy of watching my folks doing the most important thing in their lives, and seeing that their experience resonated with people watching the film … it was overwhelming."


The film was made more than 80 years ago when Bob Albee's newlywed parents, Bill and Ruth Albee of California, made an incredible journey: they travelled on foot through hundreds of kilometres of officially uncharted territory in northern B.C. and southern Yukon, with their two young children, aged five and eight — Bob's older siblings — in tow. Bob hadn't been born yet.

The Albees, sponsored by National Geographic, filmed and photographed much of that 1940 journey. A short documentary film about it, called Family Afoot in the Yukon, was released later that year.

The film, however, all but disappeared from the public record in the decades that followed.

Then, in 2022, an archivist at the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse helped rescue it from obscurity, culminating in last week's public screening in Whitehorse.

A passion for preservation

Richard Lawrence of the Yukon Archives has a passion for preservation and says he's always on the lookout for old Yukon films. When he learned of a copy of Family Afoot in the Yukon at an online auction — destined for expunction if not sold — he decided to bid on it.

"Nobody else did," he recalled.

The story caught his attention.

"It was about this family walking from Watson Lake to Frances Lake during the summer of 1940 — and this was all pre-[Alaska] Highway," he said.

"They were actually, in a way, on a mission," Lawrence said, "It wasn't just for the walk."

Edward and Ruth Albee pictured in northern British Columbia in 1930. A restored documentary film about a long hike they took from northern B.C. to Yukon in 1940 with two of their children was recently shown in Whitehorse.

Bill and Ruth Albee pictured in northern B.C. in 1930. A restored documentary film about a long hike they took in the region a decade later, with 2 of their children, was recently shown in Whitehorse. (Submitted by Bob Albee)

Lawrence explained that the Albees' journey had been sponsored by National Geographic magazine, as well as Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil, the largest public oil company in the world), as a way to help the Alaska Highway Commission find the best route for the planned highway. The Second World War was underway and the U.S. military planned the highway as a way to help protect its territory in the North.

"Part of the reason why they [the Albees] did this walk was to determine if the [Alaska Highway] route north of Frances Lake onto the Pelly, across to the Yukon River up to Dawson, would have been more favourable… and it was seriously considered," Lawrence said.

In the end, the commission opted for a different route than the one travelled by the Albees, and the film, Family Afoot in the Yukon, is mostly about something else.

'Just another way of life'

Lawrence said in addition to its inherently fascinating historical context, Family Afoot in the Yukon stands out for its focus on the experience of the Albee children, aged five and eight, enjoying a seemingly idyllic life in the bush.

Jo-evelyn Albee, 5, and Billy Albee, 8, in the fall of 1940. The raft the children are standing on was built by their father, Bill.

Jo Evelyn Albee, 5, and Billy Albee, 8, in the fall of 1940. Over the course of their Yukon journey, their father Bill built many rafts to carry the family across some of the larger rivers and streams. (Submitted by Bob and Marty Albee)

"This story has a ripple effect. It touches so many things," he said.

The Albees' route took the family from Lower Post, B.C. — where they had to be flown in by bush plane — up to Watson Lake, Yukon. From there, they followed the Frances River to end at Frances Lake, about three months and 300 kilometres later, and be flown out from there.

"It was not a common route," Lawrence said, "[They walked] over a lot of terrain that wasn't really very well mapped. And even the First Nations people there said that many people hadn't been over it for decades."

Though Family Afoot staunchly promotes the feasibility of such an adventure with kids, Bob Albee explained his parents were experienced hikers who knew how to survive in the wilderness.


Ruth Albee, left, in 1930 with two Indigenous women (not yet identified) in Lower Post, B.C.

Ruth Albee, left, in 1930 with two Indigenous women (not yet identified) in Lower Post, B.C. (Submitted by Bill and Marty Albee)

"As far as safety and so-forth, they didn't think it was an issue. It was just another way of life," Albee said.

Search leads to California

The copy of the film that Richard Lawrence first bought at auction was a disappointment. When he received it from the British Film Institute in England, the colour footage had worn out substantially over the decades.

"When a film sits for too long and is on poor stock, it turns red — it loses its greens and blues and yellows and so on," he explained.

But Lawrence also knew of the "absolutely beautiful" colour photographs of the Albees' travels that had been published by National Geographic in the same year. He was determined to find a copy of the film in its original colour, if one even existed.

Richard Lawrence of the Yukon Archives flips through a copy of National Geographic from 1940, rendering the Albees’ adventures in print. The magazine helped sponsor the couple’s journey.

Richard Lawrence of the Yukon Archives flips through a copy of National Geographic from 1940, rendering the Albees’ adventures in print. The magazine helped sponsor the couple’s journey. (Max Leighton/CBC)

"That led me down to Carmel, California, and then finally to Olympia, Wash., where Bob [Albee] solved the mystery," he said, explaining that Bob had inherited what was likely the only colour version of the film still available.

Bob Albee describes the moment he was first contacted by Lawrence as almost magical.

"It was like a gift from above coming down," he said. "I did want to get it [the film] in the right hands of some sort. When Richard called me, I said, 'You are the guy I want.'"

'I was just in awe'

A few months later, Bob Albee and his wife Marty travelled from Olympia to attend the screening in Whitehorse. They also brought with them a collection of Bill and Ruth Albee's historic photos from the time, many of which had never before been shown in public.

Yukon Archives’ Richard Lawrence, left, Bob Albee, centre, and his wife Marty Albee at the public screening of the Albee family’s documentary, along with other related historic footage. The event, organized by Yukon Historical & Museum Association, Yukon Council of Archives and Yukon Archives, was held at the Yukon Visitor’s Centre in October 2024.More

Richard Lawrence of the Yukon Archives, left, Bob Albee, centre, and his wife Marty Albee at the public screening of Family Afoot in the Yukon. The event, organized by Yukon Historical & Museum Association, Yukon Council of Archives and Yukon Archives, was held at the Yukon Visitor’s Centre last week. (Camilla Faragalli/CBC)

Whitehorse resident Joy O'Brien, of Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation, was also in the audience that evening. She said she'd been drawn by the opportunity to see some rare historical photos of Indigenous people, as few of those people would have had cameras in those days, or ever been photographed.

She said the photos were "amazing."

"I was just in awe of the aura of the First Peoples' faces, because they look so peaceful and happy. They were doing hard work but they looked really content. There's no stress on their face and no worry, you know… none of the things that we're dealing with now," she said.

"That just brought a lot of joy to my heart."

A photograph of Fanny Tom in the Yukon, 1940.

Fanny Tom, pictured above in 1940 in Lower Post, B.C. Fanny’s father Liard Tom was one of many First Nations people later recognized for the skill and knowledge they contributed to the construction of the Alaska Highway. (Submitted by Bob and Marty Albee)

Bob Albee described how his parents were often dependent on Indigenous peoples' knowledge for survival.

"They had a lot of respect for their skills, use of local resources and techniques," Bob said,

O'Brien says what she saw at the screening in Whitehorse emphasized for her the need for education on Indigenous history in the Yukon, and a better understanding of how communities were affected by things like the Alaska Highway and increasing development.

"These people were in their element, they were happy and they weren't disturbed. And I thought, 'man this could be a teaching,'" she said. "People need to be educated on the First People before them."

The Albees also hope that their photographs and Family Afoot in the Yukon continue to find a new audience. The film is now part of the Yukon Archives collection, and Bob Albee says he plans on donating the collection of photographs.

Los Angeles tribute concert for Robbie Robertson supports Woodland Cultural Centre

CBC
Mon, October 21, 2024

A recent tribute concert for Robbie Robertson in Los Angeles will benefit the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ont. (Don Dixon - image credit)

A list of stars turned out for a five-hour tribute concert to legendary Mohawk musician Robbie Robertson in Los Angeles last week, including Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Mavis Staples and Eric Church.

Robertson, the guitarist and principal songwriter of The Band, died on Aug. 9, 2023, at age 80.

The event Oct. 17 was recorded by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese with plans to release a film later. Scorsese previously directed The Last Waltz, a documentary of The Band's last performance in 1976.


The event also included Mohawk folk and soul musician, Logan Staats. Like Robertson, Staats's family comes from Six Nations of the Grand River near Hamilton.

Staats said performing at the tribute was one of the highlights of his career so far.

"But the most proud moment for me was I was able to sneak a Six Nations flag onto the stage and wave the Haudenosaunee flag during my set and then just hearing the response from the crowd," he said.

"The whole crowd just roared … it almost choked me up a little bit."


Staats (right) got to perform alongside some of his heroes at the Tribute for Robertson including American musician Taj Mahal (left).

Logan Staats, right, got to perform alongside some of his heroes at the tribute for Robertson, including American musician Taj Mahal, left. (Submitted by Logan Staats)

Staats said his grandmother ensured he knew of Robertson's own Mohawk heritage.

"I find so many just parallels between me and him, especially him not right away knowing so much about his culture and him having to go through that process of reclamation, very similar to my story."

Performing in the tribute in front of 18,000 people in Los Angeles made Staats nervous, he said.

"I know how much he means to our community and so many Indigenous musicians so for me, it was just a heavy load to carry, and I really wanted to put my best foot forward and do the best that I could," Staats said.

The Band and Roberston's work were some of Staats's earliest memories of music.

"It was kind of the soundtrack to my life," he said.

Proceeds to help promote Haudenosaunee culture

Part of the proceeds from the tribute concert will go to the Woodland Cultural Centre, which aims to preserve, promote and strengthen Indigenous language, culture, art and history. The centre is based in the former Mohawk Institute residential school building in Brantford, Ont.

"I think it's so important, you know, that still after Robbie's passing, he's still contributing to our art scene and he's still building our people up," Staats said.


One of Robertson's Junos is located in the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ont.

One of Robertson's Junos is located in the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ont. (Candace Maracle/CBC)

Heather George, the centre's executive director, said receiving funds from the tribute was a testament to the importance of the centre nationally and internationally.

Following Robertson's death in 2023, his family asked for donations to the Woodland Cultural Centre in lieu of flowers.

George said Robertson's long term commitment to the centre highlights the importance of spaces for artists to grow and thrive, adding the centre even houses one of the Junos Robertson won during his career.

The centre is in the midst of a capital campaign for a new building that will include a gallery space, theatre and workshop spaces for artists to practise their skills in the community.

The funds from the tribute concert will help the centre move forward to better serve artists, George said.

"We want to do something that represents how beautiful and how talented and creative Haudenosaunee people are."

Montreal man detained in Sudan gets day in court with lawsuit against Ottawa

Jim Bronskill
Mon, October 21, 2024 


OTTAWA — Fifteen years after filing a lawsuit against the Canadian government over his detention in Sudan, Abousfian Abdelrazik is getting his day in court.

An eight-week civil trial that began Monday in Federal Court is revisiting events that unfolded two decades ago against a backdrop of heightened vigilance because of the threat of extremism.

Abdelrazik is suing for $27 million over his ordeal abroad, claiming Ottawa arranged for his arbitrary imprisonment, encouraged his detention by Sudanese authorities and actively obstructed his repatriation to Canada for several years.


The suit, filed in 2009 and amended in 2017, also names Lawrence Cannon, the Conservative foreign affairs minister from 2008 to 2011.

Abdelrazik, 62, denies involvement in terrorism.

Born in Sudan, Abdelrazik attained refugee status in 1990 after arriving in Canada and later became a Canadian citizen. He now lives in Montreal.

He was arrested during a 2003 visit to his native country to see his ailing mother.

In custody, Abdelrazik was interrogated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about suspected extremist links. He says he was tortured by Sudanese intelligence officials during two periods of detention.

He returned to Canada in 2009 after a judge ruled Ottawa breached his constitutional rights by refusing to give him an emergency passport.

"It is an extraordinary case," Abdelrazik's lawyer, Paul Champ, told the court in an opening statement Monday.

"It's a case about a Canadian citizen who, for more than a decade, had almost every one of his rights and freedoms protected by the Charter violated or infringed in some way."

Government lawyers want Justice Patrick Gleeson to dismiss the claim.

"The evidence will show that Canada did not send Mr. Abdelrazik to Sudan," federal lawyer Andrew Gibbs told the court Monday.

"Canada did not arrest him. Canada did not urge Sudan to keep him in detention, and Canada did not mistreat or torture him, or create a risk that these things might happen."

Abdelrazik, who is scheduled to testify for several days, recalled for the court being questioned by the RCMP in Montreal in October 2000 about Ahmed Ressam, a former acquaintance who had been arrested in December 1999.

Ressam was found guilty in April 2001 on nine criminal counts stemming from a plot to detonate explosives at the Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations.

Abdelrazik also spoke of visits from CSIS officers, including one the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the infamous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

"They said, 'Do you know somebody planning to do the same thing in Canada?' I say, 'No, I don't.'"

The civil trial was set to begin in 2018, but was adjourned pending a review of emails, memos and other documentation related to the case under the Canada Evidence Act.

"It is shameful that this case took 15 years to get to trial as the Canadian government tried everything to delay and derail it," Champ told The Canadian Press.

Among the high-profile witnesses expected to testify are Cannon; Maxime Bernier, who preceded him as foreign minister; former national security adviser Margaret Bloodworth; recently departed CSIS director David Vigneault; and former senator Mobina Jaffer.

The Crown recently lost a bid to have several current and former security officials testify behind closed doors in the lawsuit.

Gleeson rejected a motion from government lawyers to exclude the public and media from the courtroom during the testimony to prevent inadvertent disclosure of sensitive secrets.

Champ argues the evidentiary record overwhelmingly points to CSIS working with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to arrange for Abdelrazik's arrest by the Sudanese authorities.

In its amended statement of defence, the government says CSIS had reasonable grounds to surmise Abdelrazik "constituted a threat to the security of Canada by virtue of suspected links to international terrorism."

However, it denies Canada shared information with Sudan about Abdelrazik before his detention, or that CSIS requested, prompted or suggested that Sudanese authorities arrest and hold him.

One of the documents disclosed in the case, a secret July 2006 memo to Kevin Lynch, clerk of the Privy Council at the time, says that given the past interest American authorities have displayed in Abdelrazik's whereabouts, "we will need to demonstrate to the U.S. that we take all aspects of this security case seriously."

Champ said the case is a horrible example of how intelligence agencies can destroy a person's life and violate their freedoms, all in the shadows and with impunity.

"Mr. Abdelrazik's case should be important to every Canadian because we need the courts to forcefully condemn the government when it violates the rights and freedoms of a citizen based on suspicions alone."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

What happens after British Columbia's indecisive election?
The Canadian Press
Mon, October 21, 2024 


British Columbians went to the polls Saturday, but now face a week or more before knowing the result, and whether the NDP's David Eby will keep his job as premier or if B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad will take charge, or if there might be a new election.

Here's how events could play out:

WHAT'S THE CURRENT SITUATION?

The initial vote count ended on Sunday with neither the NDP nor the Conservatives winning the 47 ridings needed for a majority in the 93-seat legislature.

The NDP is elected or leading in 46 ridings, and the Conservatives in 45, while the Greens won two seats.

But two hand recounts have been triggered in ridings where the NDP is narrowly leading, because the margin is fewer than 100 votes. Candidates in other ridings also have until Tuesday to ask for recounts, if the margins are close enough.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Elections BC says the recounts in Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre will occur as part of the final count on Oct. 26 - 28.

It will also be counting about 49,000 absentee and mail-in ballots at the same time.

WHEN WILL THERE BE A RESULT?

Elections BC says results will be updated on its website while the final count progresses.

WHAT'S THE PATH TO VICTORY?

For the B.C. Conservatives to win, they will likely have to flip the lead in both Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre, as well as hang onto other ridings where they already have narrow leads.

This scenario would result in a one-seat Conservative majority, and Rustad could become premier.

To secure a majority, the NDP would have to win both Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre, and pick up at least one riding where the Conservatives now lead.

Failing that, the NDP must hang on to at least one of the recount ridings, then secure the support of the Greens. As the incumbent government, the NDP would be given the first option by Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin to try to forge a minority government with the Greens' help.

The Conservatives could also seek to form a minority government with the co-operation of the Greens, but the ideological gap between the two parties is wide.

WHAT ABOUT THE SPEAKER?

The situation is complicated by the need to appoint a speaker, reducing the government's numbers by one.

Even if the Conservatives end up with 47 ridings, it would be hard to govern. Rustad could recommend a new election to break the potential deadlock.

If the NDP secures 46 ridings and the co-operation from the Greens, the two-seat buffer would make governing challenging but workable. However, Rustad has said he would take every opportunity to bring down an NDP minority government.

HAS SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED BEFORE IN B.C.?

Yes. The 2017 election resulted in neither Christy Clark's BC Liberals nor John Horgan's NDP having a majority, with the Greens winning three seats. The Liberals won the most seats and as premier, Clark got first shot at trying to form a minority government with the Greens' help.

She failed. Clark then tried to hang onto power, even appointing ministers, but her government fell in a confidence vote more than seven weeks after the election. She tried to get then-Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon to call a new election, but instead Guichon invited Horgan to try to form a government, which he did after making a deal with then-leader of the Greens Andrew Weaver.

Horgan's government stabilized after Liberal Darryl Plecas agreed to become speaker, to the anger of his party colleagues. Horgan would go on to win a solid majority in the 2020 election.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.


B.C. Greens' ex- leader Weaver thinks minority deal with NDP less likely than in 2017

Brieanna Charlebois
Mon, October 21, 2024 





The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Former B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver knows what it's like to form a minority government with the NDP, but says such a deal to create the province's next administration is less likely this time than seven years ago.

Weaver struck a power-sharing agreement that resulted in John Horgan's NDP minority government in 2017, but said in an interview Monday there is now more animosity between the two parties.

Neither the NDP nor the B.C. Conservatives secured a majority in Saturday's election, raising the prospect of a minority NDP government if Leader David Eby can get the support of two Green legislators.

Manual recounts in two ridings could also play an important role in the outcome, which will not be known for about a week.

Weaver, who is no longer a member of the Greens, endorsed a Conservative candidate in his home riding.

He said Eby would be in a better position to negotiate if Furstenau, who lost her seat, stepped aside as party leader.

"I think Mr. Eby would be able to have fresh discussions with fresh new faces around the table, (after) four years of political sniping … between Sonia and the NDP in the B.C. legislature," he said.

He said Furstenau's loss put the two elected Greens in an awkward position because parties "need the leader in the legislature."

Furstenau could resign as leader or one of the elected Greens could step down and let her run in a byelection in their riding, he said.

"They need to resolve that issue sooner rather than later," he said.

The Green victories went to Rob Botterell in Saanich North and the Islands and Jeremy Valeriote in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky.

Neither Botterell nor Valeriote have held seats in the legislature before, Weaver noted.

"It's not like in 2017 when, you know, I had been in the (legislature) for four years already," Weaver said, adding that "the learning curve is steep."

Sanjay Jeram, chair of undergraduate studies in political science at Simon Fraser University, said he doesn't think it'll be an "easygoing relationship between (the NDP and Greens) this time around."

"I don't know if Eby and Furstenau have the same relationship — or the potential to have the same relationship — as Horgan and Weaver did," he said. "I think their demands will be a little more strict and it'll be a little more of a cold alliance than it was in 2017 if they do form an alliance."

Horgan and Weaver shook hands on a confidence-and-supply agreement before attending a rugby match, where they were spotted sitting together before the deal became public knowledge.

Eby said in his election-night speech that he had already reached out to Furstenau and suggested common "progressive values" between their parties.

Furstenau said in her concession speech that her party was poised to play a "pivotal role" in the legislature.

Botterell said in an election-night interview that he was "totally supportive of Sonia" and he would "do everything I can to support her and the path forward that she chooses to take because that's her decision."

The Green Party of Canada issued a news release Monday, congratulating the candidates on their victories, noting Valeriote's win is the first time that a Green MLA has been elected outside of Vancouver Island.

"Now, like all British Columbians we await the final seat count to know which party will have the best chance to form government. Let’s hope that the Green caucus has a pivotal role," the release said, echoing Furstenau's turn of phrase.

The final results of the election won't be known until at least next week.

Elections BC says manual recounts will be held on Oct. 26 to 28 in two ridings where NDP candidates led B.C. Conservatives by fewer than 100 votes after the initial count ended on Sunday.

The outcomes in Surrey City Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat could determine who forms government.

The election's initial results have the NDP elected or leading in 46 ridings, and the B.C. Conservatives in 45, both short of the 47 majority mark in B.C.'s 93-seat legislature.

If the Conservatives win both of the recount ridings and win all other ridings where they lead, Rustad will win with a one-seat majority.

If the NDP holds onto at least one of the ridings where there are recounts, wins the other races it leads, and strikes a deal with the Greens, they would have enough numbers to form a minority government.

But another election could also be on the cards, since the winner will have to nominate a Speaker, reducing the government's numbers in the legislature by one vote.

Elections BC says it will also be counting about 49,000 absentee and mail-in ballots from Oct. 26 to 28.

The NDP went into the election with 55 ridings, representing a comfortable majority in what was then an 87-seat legislature.

Jeram, with Simon Fraser University, said though the counts aren't finalized, the Conservatives were the big winners in the election.

"They weren't really a not much of a formal party until not that long ago, and to go from two per cent of the vote to winning 45 or more seats in the B.C. provincial election is just incredible," he said in an interview Monday.

Jeram said people had expected Eby to call an election after he took over from John Horgan in 2022, and if he had, he doesn't think there would have been the same result.

He said the B.C. Conservative's popularity grew as a result of the decision of the BC Liberals to rebrand as BC United and later drop out.

"Had Eby called an election before that really shook out, and maybe especially before (Pierre) Poilievre, kind of really had the wind in his sails and started to grow, I think he could have won the majority for sure."

He said he wasn't surprised by the results of the election, saying polls were fairly accurate.

"Ultimately, it really was a result that we saw coming for a while, since the moment that BC United withdrew and put their support behind the conservatives, I think this was the outcome that was expected."

— With files from Darryl Greer

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press

CANADA

Public inquiry grapples with definition of foreign interference in its final week

David Baxter
Mon, October 21, 2024 

OTTAWA — A federal public inquiry is grappling with the thorny distinction between legitimate foreign diplomacy and nefarious attempts to meddle in Canada's affairs.

The inquiry entered its final scheduled week of public hearings and consultations Monday with the first of four days of roundtable discussions featuring experts who are seeking to solve that problem.

Quassim Cassam, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, told the roundtable Monday morning that the U.K. defined it when it passed legislation making foreign interference an offence.

That includes activities carried out at the direction of a foreign power for its benefit. The law, which was passed in 2022, suggests legitimate diplomacy and attempts at influence are carried out in an open and transparent manner, while interference activities are usually done clandestinely, such as disinformation campaigns.

Cassam, whose research expertise includes extremism, said a definition is definitely needed.

"In the absence of that, it's going to be very, very hard to draw a line in between (diplomatic) influence and interference," he said.

Henri-Paul Normandin, Canada's former ambassador to Haiti, told the inquiry it can be difficult to determine what are legitimate and illegitimate practices of diplomats.

He said one way to decide is whether the foreign state officials attempt to hide their true intentions when holding a meeting or making a statement.

"If we want to make an analysis to distinguish between interference and influence we need to look at action and intention," Normandin said in French.

"If there is a legitimate action with a legitimate intention it's OK. Otherwise, if there's a malicious action … this is interference."

Former privy council clerk and Canadian ambassador to Italy Alex Himelfarb suggested it is impossible to "define away" this grey zone and greater attention needs to be paid to the use of non-state actors in spreading disinformation.

Himelfarb said that became apparent with disinformation around vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There is an awful lot of deliberate disinformation, much of it foreign-driven, that on the face of it has nothing to do with elections or politics, but in the end has everything to do with elections and politics," Himelfarb told the commission.

"That information got intertwined with issues of identity and ideology. It became exploitable for political purposes. This was happening quite independent of the writ period, long before elections, but is an indirect way of influencing elections."

In an effort to combat disinformation, the inquiry's commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue asked panellists if they believed it would be worth having an independent third party act as a fact-checker of sorts in elections to try to combat disinformation.

She acknowledged that it wouldn't be an easy task.

"The risk is to become the truth-teller, and in my mind probably a risk that we have to keep in mind all the time," Hogue said.

Tanja Börzel, a political science professor at Freie Universität Berlin, told the inquiry that the European Union has a fact checking body that could be worth looking at in the Canadian context.

Cassam said it could be difficult to convince people to trust such a body, especially those who are already distrustful of government and its institutions.

Hogue is tasked with examining efforts of foreign states like China, India and Russia to interfere in the last two federal elections and in Canada's democracy.

The inquiry looked both at what kind of interference already took place, as well as what Canada can do to prevent it in the future.

A final report is due by the end of the year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024

David Baxter, The Canadian Press