Manitoba had very little snow this winter, which has some worried we're in for a drought

Sarah Petz 

CBC

3/28/2021

 

© Marina von Stackelberg/CBC It's been a dry fall and winter for Winnipeg and many parts of southern Manitoba, and that could spell bad news for farmers wanting to plant their crops.

It's been one of the driest years on record for Manitoba, and that has some people, particularly farmers, worried the province will face a drought this year.

Parts of southwestern Manitoba have seen less than 20 millimetres of precipitation since Nov. 1, which is close to 30 per cent less than normal, said Rob Paola, a retired Environment Canada meteorologist who runs the popular website and Twitter account @robsobs.

Winnipeg had its third driest winter on record, with only about 25 millimetres of precipitation in December, January and February, he said.

"We've had almost no snowstorms the entire winter, and now as we get into spring, that storm track is still kind of bypassing us to the south, and we're missing out on these big weather systems," he said.

This is concerning heading into warmer months as it leads to increased risk of wildfires, grass fires and even forest fires if it gets into central and northern Manitoba, he said.

For farmers, it means less soil moisture as they plant their crops.

Bill Campbell, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, said crop production will be compromised if Manitoba doesn't see some timely rains.

"It's a huge concern, because I would say our subsoil moisture is gone and that bank account of moisture will not be there to kind of get us through the tough times if we have that scenario of no moisture through the summer," he said.

It's a huge investment for farmers to plant their crops, and there's no guarantee that there will be sufficient moisture through the spring and summer to allow the crops to grow properly, he said.

"And when we seed it, we don't get it back. Like, you can't go and say, 'Well God, I'd like to get some of that investment back, please. Can I get it out of the dirt?'" he said.

"It's an investment that you rely on Mother Nature to provide the moisture in the right environment so that we have a crop to harvest."

Another concern is feed for livestock. If cattle can't feed on grass, that means farmers have to purchase feed, Campbell said. If there's no feed to purchase, farmers will have to sell their livestock.

It has a huge impact on the Manitoba economy, he said.

Still, the situation can turn around quickly if the province sees even an inch of rain in April, he said.

"An inch of rain would get us a lot more comfortable," he said.

The first provincial flood forecast of the year said spring flooding is very unlikely and Manitoba is looking at a drier spring.

New York lawmakers agree to legalize recreational marijuana

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York is poised the join the growing number of states that have legalized marijuana after state lawmakers reached a late-night deal to allow sales of the drug for recreational use.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Democrats who now wield a veto-proof majority in the state Legislature have made passing it a priority this year, and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has estimated legalization could eventually bring the state about $350 million annually.

“My goal in carrying this legislation has always been to end the racially disparate enforcement of marijuana prohibition that has taken such a toll on communities of colour across our state, and to use the economic windfall of legalization to help heal and repair those same communities,” Sen. Liz Krueger, Senate sponsor of the bill and chair of the Senate’s finance committee, said.

At least 14 other states already allow residents to buy marijuana for recreational and not just medical use, but New York’s past efforts to pass marijuana legalization have failed in recent years.

The legislation would allow recreational marijuana sales to adults over the age of 21, and set up a licensing process for the delivery of cannabis products to customers. Individual New Yorkers could grow up to three mature and three immature plants for personal consumption, and local governments could opt out of retail sales.

The legislation would take effect immediately if passed, though sales wouldn’t start until New York sets up rules and a proposed cannabis board. Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes estimated Friday it could take 18 months to two years for sales to start.

Adam Goers, a vice-president of Columbia Care, a New York medical marijuana provider that’s interested in getting into the recreational market, said New York’s proposed system would “ensure newcomers have a crack at the marketplace” alongside the state’s existing medical marijuana providers.

“There’s a big pie in which a lot of different folks are going to be able to be a part of it,” Goers said.

New York would set a 9% sales tax on cannabis, plus an additional 4% tax split between the county and local government. It would also impose an additional tax based on the level of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, ranging from 0.5 cents per milligram for flower to 3 cents per milligram for edibles.

New York would eliminate penalties for possession of less than three ounces of cannabis, and automatically expunge records of people with past convictions for marijuana-related offences that would no longer be criminalized. That’s a step beyond a 2019 law that expunged many past convictions for marijuana possession and reduced the penalty for possessing small amounts.

And New York would provide loans, grants and incubator programs to encourage participation in the cannabis industry by people from minority communities, as well as small farmers, women and disabled veterans.

Proponents have said the move could create thousands of jobs and begin to address the racial injustice of a decades-long drug war that disproportionately targeted minority and poor communities.

“Police, prosecutors, child services and ICE have used criminalization as a weapon against them, and the impact this bill will have on the lives of our oversurveiled clients cannot be overstated,” Alice Fontier, managing director of Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said in a statement Saturday.

New York's Legal Aid Society also hailed the agreement. “This landmark legislation brings justice to New York State by ending prohibition, expunging conviction records that have curtailed the opportunities of countless predominately young Black and Latinx New Yorkers, and delivers economic justice to ensure that communities who have suffered the brunt of aggressive and disparate marijuana enforcement are first in line to reap the economic gain,” the group said in a news release Sunday.

Melissa Moore, the Drug Policy Alliance’s director for New York state, said the bill "really puts a nail in the coffin of the drug war that’s been so devastating to communities across New York, and puts in place comprehensive policies that are really grounded in community reinvestment.”

Cuomo has pointed to growing acceptance of legalization in the Northeast, including in Massachusetts, Maine and most recently, New Jersey.

Past efforts to legalize recreational use have been hurt by a lack of support from suburban Democrats, disagreements over how to distribute marijuana sales tax revenue and questions over how to address drivers suspected of driving high.

It also has run into opposition from law enforcement, school and community advocates, who warn legalization would further strain a health care system already overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic and send mixed messages to young people.

“We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the serious crisis of youth vaping and the continuing opioid epidemic, this harmful legislation is counterintuitive,” said an open letter signed by the Medical Society of the State of NY, New York State Parent Teacher Association, New York Sheriff’s Association and several other organizations March 11.

New York officials plan to launch an education and prevention campaign aimed at reducing the risk of cannabis among school-aged children, and schools could get grants for anti-vaping and drug prevention and awareness programs.

And the state will also launch a study due by Dec. 31, 2022, that examines the extent that cannabis impairs driving, and whether it depends on factors like time and metabolism.

“One of the things that no country in the world has and everybody wants is a way to quickly and easily figure out if someone’s high or impaired on cannabis,” University of Buffalo psychologist and professor of community health and health behaviour R. Lorraine Collins said. “Research is being done to find systems that can do that. But I think those efforts will not come to fruition for awhile.”

The bill also sets aside revenues to cover the costs of everything from regulating marijuana, to substance abuse prevention.

State police could also get funding to hire and train more so-called “drug recognition experts.”

But there’s no evidence that drug recognition experts can tell whether someone is high or not, according to Collins, who was appointed to Cuomo’s 2018 working group tasked with drafting cannabis regulations.

“I think it’s very important that we approach that challenge using science and research and not wishes or unsubstantiated claims,” Collins said.

Collins pointed to a 2020 report from the American Civil Liberties Union that found that Blacks are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession compared to Whites, based on FBI statistics.

“Every New Yorker should be concerned about how these laws will be implemented or how those ways of examining drivers will be implemented in different communities,” Collins said. “It’s not likely to be equal.”

The bill allows cities, towns and villages to opt out of allowing adult-use cannabis retail dispensaries or on-site consumption licenses by passing a local law by Dec. 31, 2021 or nine months after the effective date of the legislation. They cannot opt out of legalization.

______

Peltz reported from New York City.

Marina Villeneuve And Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press

USA

Amazon hit with lawsuit over claims that it failed to provide employees with required 30-minute lunch breaks

ztayeb@businessinsider.com (Zahra Tayeb) 8 hrs ago


 Amazon is under fire over workers' rights. 

Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A former Amazon worker filed a lawsuit against the company over claims of missed lunch breaks.

The lawsuit claimed employees were denied the required 30-minute meal break for a five-hour shift.

It also claimed workers had to deal with serious understaffing issues and immense workloads.


A lawsuit against Amazon that claimed workers did not receive adequate lunch breaks at a California fulfilment center is moving ahead.

The case was transferred to US District Court California, Northern District, on Friday after its first filing in San Francisco County Superior Court in February.

Former employee Lovenia Scott is alleging that Amazon denied staff the required 30-minute meal breaks for each five-hour work period under Californian legislation.

The suit claimed meal-break periods were shortened "due to the time spent listening and responding to work-related obligations on their walkie talkies," which workers were allegedly required to carry with them.




In addition, the lawsuit alleged workers were instructed to take a break "if and when they could get it."

But according to Scott, who worked in the Vacaville warehouse, there were serious staffing issues and so much work being imposed on workers, it was unlikely they would be able to take their breaks if they wanted to finish their work on time.

Insider has approached Amazon for comment.

These are not the only allegations over workers' rights that Amazon has faced in recent weeks. Reports of workers urinating in bottles back in 2018 re-emerged after a Twitter spat between the company and Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, over the matter.

A delivery driver in the Detroit area told Insider that rather than urinate inside the vans, she used to hold it to the point of bladder infections.

Amazon delivery drivers also reported that they had to defecate in bags and struggled to change menstrual pads.

The company denied the claims about "peeing in bottles" and tweeted "if that were true nobody would work for us." However, documents showing Amazon was aware of drivers' practice of urinating in bottles and defecating in bags were published by The Intercept on Thursday.

 

German union calls four-day strike at Amazon sites ahead of Easter

BERLIN (Reuters) - The trade union Verdi has called for workers at six Amazon sites in Germany to go on strike from Sunday evening for four days in the latest attempt to try to force the U.S. e-commerce group to recognise collective bargaining agreements.

© Reuters/Rick Wilking FILE PHOTO: 

A box from Amazon.com is pictured on the porch of a house in Golden

Verdi said the strikes at Amazon's sites in Rheinberg, Werne, Koblenz, Leipzig and at two locations in Bad Hersfeld signalled an "unofficial start" to wage talks for the retail and mail order industry, which are due to begin in the next few weeks.

"Amazon is making a mint in the coronavirus crisis. For this reason alone, wage evasion must be stopped there," said Verdi representative Orhan Akman.

Verdi is demanding a pay increase of 4.5% for workers in the retail and mail order industry.

"This must also be possible at Amazon this year," Akman said.

Amazon has faced a long-running battle with unions in Germany over better pay and conditions for logistics workers, who have frequently staged strikes since 2013.

Germany is Amazon's biggest market after the United States.

Amazon says it offers excellent pay and benefits. It has said during past calls for strikes over 90% of employees in the logistic centres worked as normal.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Killing of youths sparks protests in northwest Pakistan
By Jibran Ahmad and Saud Mehsud

su

© Reuters/AKHTAR SOOMRO People chant slogans demanding an investigation following the deaths of four teenagers in Jani Khel area in Bannu District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, during a protest in Karachi,

PESHAWAR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters broke through a police blockade in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday as they tried to march on the city of Bannu and then on to Islamabad to demand a government probe into the deaths of four young men who they allege were tortured and killed by security forces.

© Reuters/AKHTAR SOOMRO People sit with black flags as they demand an investigation following the deaths of four teenagers in Jani Khel area in Bannu District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, during a protest in Karachi,

Police fired tear gas in an attempt to keep them from entering the city of Bannu, which lies on the way to Islamabad, on Sunday evening.

The protesters were carrying the bodies of the four young men, aged between 15 and 20, found in a shallow grave on March 21 in the town of Jani Khel, outside Bannu.

© Reuters/AKHTAR SOOMRO People chant slogans demanding an investigation following the deaths of four teenagers in Jani Khel area in Bannu District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, during a protest in Karachi,

"The government didn’t pay any attention to us and left us alone to mourn the slain boys," Haji Mohammad Wali, one of the protesters, told Reuters by phone.


Relatives of the dead, alleging they died during interrogation by security forces, held a sit-in in Jani Khel for nearly a week, refusing to bury the bodies until an investigation was opened against an army officer they said was responsible.

A Pakistani military spokesman declined to comment about the incident on Sunday, and the military has not commented publicly on the case.

The central government has not commented on the case.

Officials of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, including Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, travelled to Bannu on Sunday to meet with protesters.

"This incident is a challenge for my government and law enforcement agencies," Khan said in a statement, adding those responsible for the deaths will be held accountable.

The protesters said that after their demands for an inquiry went unheard they decided to march to Islamabad - 300 km (190 miles) away - and local police tried to stop them by placing barricades in Bannu.

The four dead boys had been missing for several weeks, according to their relatives. Relatives said their bodies bore signs of torture when they were found.

Protests were also held in the port city of Karachi on Sunday.

The town of Jani Khel is part of the former semi-autonomous tribal areas, a region along the Afghanistan border that served as a base for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups until a series of Pakistani military offensives drove them out.

Rights groups have accused the military of carrying out extrajudicial detentions and other abuses in the area - a charge the military has consistently denied.

As Canadian Pacific Railway bulks up, rival Canadian National takes a few attention-grabbing measures of its own

Kevin Carmichael 

Postmedia

2/27/2021

6

© Provided by Financial Post CN has recognized that it’s no longer sufficient for big companies to focus exclusively on maximizing profits.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s plan to purchase Kansas City Southern will vie for business story of the year, but its long-time rival, Canadian National Railway Co., also has been doing some things that could help it down the road.

The former Crown corporation has recognized that it’s no longer sufficient for big companies to focus exclusively on maximizing profits. The public, including a growing number of investors, now demands more. So, while CP was bulking up, CN was getting serious about ESG, the emerging force in markets that demands a commitment to the environment, social concerns and enlightened governance in return for access to a pool of capital worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

A couple of days after CP announced the KCS takeover on March 21, CN revealed that it was on track to join its Calgary-based rival as one of only a handful of big Canadian corporations that has significantly diluted the influence of older white men in their board rooms.

CN said it had nominated Denise Gray , president of South Korean lithium-ion battery maker LG Chem Ltd.’s North American unit, to join a board that will be reduced to 11 directors from the current 14. Gray, who is Black, would ensure that Montreal-based CN will be overseen by a set of directors that more closely mirrors the larger population, one of the objectives of Bay Streeter Wes Hall’s BlackNorth Initiative , an effort inspired by the global backlash that followed the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last year.

A minor reshuffling of directors will strike some as insignificant, and others as slavishly faddish. Another way to think about it: embarrassing. Only about 30 per cent of directors and 18 per cent of executives at S&P/TSX companies were women in 2019, according to Catalyst , an advocacy group. Visible minorities filled about six per cent of board seats, according to a review by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, a law firm.

Regardless, leadership diversity is fast becoming a tenant of modern governance. Scholarship shows that companies that are dominated by older white men have too many blindspots. They lose out on young talent that’s adamant about working only for employers that reflect their values. They risk alienating customers, politicians and regulators.

“At the heart of the CEO agenda, is the imperative to build and maintain trust,” Nicolas Marcoux, head of consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc.’s Canadian unit, said at a virtual event sponsored by the Toronto branch of the Canadian Club on March 23. “ESG is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have.”

To be sure, CN chief executive Jean-Jacques Ruest’s senior management team remains entirely white and mostly male. (The roster of vice-presidents is less monochromic).

But Ruest will be the only CN executive on the docket when shareholders vote at the company’s virtual annual meeting on April 27. The independent nominees are an even split of men and women, the same as CP. That matters to investors who decide where to deploy their money based on ESG assessments. CN is betting that its rivalry with CP and American railroads such as CSX Corp. will be decided by more than shipping costs and arrival times in the future.

© Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg files CN chief executive Jean-Jacques Ruest.

“Our longer-term goal is to be at the leading edge of ESG best practices across North America and globally,” Ruest and Robert Pace, the boar chair, said in a letter to shareholders ahead of next month’s annual meeting.

Achieving that objective is going to take some more work. CN tends to say the right things, and often backs up its words with action: the company has cut the greenhouse gas emissions spewed by its locomotives by 40 per cent since 1993, earning high marks from at least one outfit that tracks companies’ commitment to fighting climate change.

Still, it’s unclear that CN has put much distance between itself and its competitors when it comes to ESG. Sustainalytics, a unit of Morningstar Inc. that does ESG research, says CN and CP are both “low risk,” so an ethical investor could buy either stock without violating her or his principles. The firm currently rates CP slightly higher — 30th out of 335 transportation companies (1,611th out of a universe of 13,676 companies), while it ranks CN 34th (1,683rd overall).

“With respect to ESG, the whole world is moving that way,” Pace, who has led CN’s board since 2014, said in an interview earlier this month. “The trend is wide. It’s deep. We just have to make sure our goals and aspirations are real and we can deliver.”

CP Rail’s purchase of U.S. rival is a bet on production moving out of China in COVID-19 aftermath

Telus sees itself as something greater than a telephone company. Is it?

For the McCain empire, built on potatoes, climate change is serious business

Kevin Carmichael: On the question of CEWS and dividends, investors will ultimately decide

Too often, companies’ ESG initiatives emphasize what they are doing about the environment. Perhaps the most interesting part of CN’s recent efforts is that its focus is wider than climate change. It said last month that the tenure of independent directors will be limited to 14 years and that they will be allowed to serve on a maximum of three public boards including CN.

More importantly, the company also said that it would create an advisory council of Indigenous people, a recognition that CN tracks cross some 110 First Nations communities. Pace said the decision was partly inspired by the protests that disrupted rail traffic ahead of the pandemic, but that it also reflects an admission that Indigenous voices had been ignored for too long.

“The whole country has taken a long time. We all have to do our part,” Pace said. “W e had to step here and make some changes. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Financial Post

• Email: kcarmichael@postmedia.com | Twitter: carmichaelkevin

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that CP’s board it entirely white. We regret the error.

Myanmar mourns, protests after crackdown's deadliest day yet

YANGON, Myanmar — Mourners flocked to the funerals of those killed in the deadliest day of a crackdown on protests of last month's coup in Myanmar, as demonstrators, uncowed by the violence, returned to the streets Sunday to press their demands for a return to democracy.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A day earlier, security forces killed at least 114 people, including several children under 16, according to local media — a shocking escalation that prompted the U.N. rapporteur to accuse the junta of committing “mass murder” and to criticize the international community for not doing enough to stop it. There were reports that the violence continued Sunday.

At a funeral in Bhamo in the northern state of Kachin, a large crowd gathered to chant democracy slogans and raise the three-finger salute that has come to symbolize resistance to the military takeover. Family and friends were paying their respects to Shwe Myint, a 36-year-old who was shot dead by security forces on Saturday.

The military had initially seized her body and refused to return it until her family signed a statement that her death was not caused by them, according to the Democratic Voice of Burma, a broadcast and online news service.

Mourners also used another funeral as a show of resistance. In Yangon, the country's largest city, they flashed the three-finger salute as they wheeled the coffin of a 13-year-old boy. Sai Wai Yan was shot dead by security forces Saturday as he played outside his home.

The Feb. 1 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government reversed years of progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. It has again made Myanmar the focus of international scrutiny as security forces have repeatedly fired into crowds of protesters. More than 420 people have been killed since the takeover, according to multiple counts. The crackdown extends beyond the demonstrations: Humanitarian workers reported that the military had carried out airstrikes Sunday against guerilla fighters in the eastern part of the country.

The junta has accused some of the demonstrators of perpetrating the violence because of their sporadic use of Molotov cocktails and has said its use of force has been justified to stop what it has called rioting. On Saturday, some protesters in Yangon were seen carrying bows and arrows.

Saturday's death toll far exceeded the previous single-day high that ranged from 74 to 90 on March 14. The killings happened throughout the country as Myanmar’s military celebrated the annual Armed Forces Day holiday with a parade in the country’s capital, Naypyitaw.

“Today the junta of Myanmar has made Armed Forces Day a day of infamy with the massacre of men, women and very young children throughout country,” said Tom Andrews, the U.N.'s independent expert on human rights for Myanmar. “Words of condemnation or concern are frankly ringing hollow to the people of Myanmar while the military junta commits mass murder against them. ... It is past time for robust, co-ordinated action.”

Those calls were echoed by others. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was shocked by the killings of civilians, including children, and a group of defence chiefs from 12 countries also condemned the violence.

U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said: “The shameful, cowardly, brutal actions of the military and police – who have been filmed shooting at protesters as they flee, and who have not even spared young children – must be halted immediately.”

But it's still not clear what action is possible — or how quick it will be. The U.N. Security Council has condemned the violence but not advocated concerted action against the junta, such as a ban on selling it arms. China and Russia are both major arms suppliers to Myanmar’s military as well as politically sympathetic, and as members of the council would almost certainly veto any such move.

If the Security Council isn't able to do anything, Andrews called for an emergency international summit. Already many countries have already imposed some sanctions and threatened more, but it’s not clear what further action governments will take. Human rights group Amnesty International also criticized the hesitancy to do more.

“U.N. Security Council member states’ continued refusal to meaningfully act against this never-ending horror is contemptible,” said Ming Yu Hah, the organization’s deputy regional director for campaigns.

In the meantime, protesters have continued to rally in Myanmar's streets. In one demonstration in Yangon, a small group made its way through a residential area that the day before had seen chaos with police shooting at demonstrators and the protesters responding with fireworks and Molotov cocktails. The march finished without incident.

But there were reports on social media that more protesters were killed Sunday.

In addition to unleashing violence against demonstrators, the military is also continuing to battle ethnic Karen fighters in the country's east. About 3,000 villagers from territory controlled by the Karen fled across the border to Thailand on Sunday after Myanmar military aircraft dropped bombs on a Karen guerrilla position, said workers for two humanitarian relief agencies.

The Karen National Union is one of more than a dozen ethnic organizations that have been fighting for decades to gain more autonomy from Myanmar’s central government.

The tension at the border comes as the leaders of the resistance to the coup are seeking to have the Karen and other ethnic groups band together and join them as allies. So far the ethnic armed groups have only committed to providing protection to protesters in the areas they control.

The Associated Press

Full supermoon in March 2021: When to see the 'Worm' moon

By Megan Marples and Ashley Strickland, CNN 


See the "Worm" supermoon glow in the March sky this Sunday.

© Owen Humphreys/Press Association/AP The Worm moon will peak Sunday afternoon and is the fourth closest supermoon of 2021.

The moon will be fullest at 2:48 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon, according to NASA.

This will be the year's first supermoon, meaning the moon is slightly closer to Earth and therefore appears bigger and brighter in the sky. The Worm supermoon is the fourth brightest moon of 2021, according to Earth Sky.

© Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images The Milky Way is seen from the Glacier Point Trailside in Yosemite National Park, California.

In the Hindu month of Phalguna, this month's moon marks the Holi Festival, according to NASA, which celebrates the beginning of spring.

The Native American tribes in the South call the March full moon the Worm moon because of the earthworm casts, soil that the worms digest, become visible as the ground thaws.

Other Native American tribes have different names for the full moon in March that still relate to animals, according to the Western Washington University Planetarium website.

The Algonquin tribe northeast of the Great Lakes call the March full moon "namossack kesos" or "catching fish." In the northern plains of Canada, the Cree tribe call it "migisupizum" or "Eagle moon."

Typical of a normal year, 2021 will also have 12 full moons. (Last year had 13 full moons, two of which were in October.)

Here are all of the full moons remaining this year and their names, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac:

April 26 -- Pink moon

May 26 -- Flower moon

June 24 -- Strawberry moon

July 23 -- Buck moon

August 22 -- Sturgeon moon

September 20 -- Harvest moon

October 20 -- Hunter's moon

November 19 -- Beaver moon

December 18 -- Cold moon

Be sure to check for the other names of these moons as well, attributed to the different Native American tribes.

Here is what else you can look forward to in 2021.

Meteor showers

There is a bit of a wait until the next meteor shower, the popular Lyrids, in April. The Lyrids will peak on April 22 and will be best seen in the Northern Hemisphere -- but the moon will be 68% full, according to the American Meteor Society. This may make the meteor shower less visible.

The Eta Aquariids follow soon after, peaking on May 5 when the moon is 38% full. This shower is best seen in the southern tropics, but will still produce a medium shower for those north of the equator.

The Delta Aquariids are also best seen from the southern tropics and will peak between July 28 and 29 when the moon is 74% full.

Interestingly, another meteor shower peaks on the same night -- the Alpha Capricornids. Although this is a much weaker shower, it has been known to produce some bright fireballs during the peak. It will be visible for those on either side of the equator.

The Perseid meteor shower, the most popular of the year, will peak between August 11 and 12 in the Northern Hemisphere, when the moon is only 13% full.

Here is the meteor shower schedule for the rest of the year, according to EarthSky's meteor shower outlook.


October 8: Draconids
October 21: Orionids
November 4 to 5: South Taurids
November 11 to 12: North Taurids
November 17: Leonids
December 13 to 14: Geminids
December 22: Ursids


Solar and lunar eclipses

This year, there will be two eclipses of the sun and two eclipses of the moon -- and three of these will be visible for some in North America, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.

A total eclipse of the moon will occur on May 26, best visible to those in western North America and Hawaii from 4:46 a.m. ET to 9:51 a.m. ET.

An annular eclipse of the sun will happen on June 10, visible in northern and northeastern North America from 4:12 a.m. ET to 9:11 a.m. ET. The sun won't be fully blocked by the moon, so be sure to wear eclipse glasses to safely view this event.

November 19 will see a partial eclipse of the moon, and skywatchers in North America and Hawaii can view it between 1 a.m. ET and 7:06 a.m. ET.

And the year ends with a total eclipse of the sun on December 4. It won't be seen in North America, but those in the Falkland Islands, the southern tip of Africa, Antarctica and southeastern Australia will be able to spot it.

Visible planets

Skywatchers will have multiple opportunities to spot the planets in our sky during certain mornings and evenings throughout 2021, according to the Farmer's Almanac planetary guide.

It's possible to see most of these with the naked eye, with the exception of distant Neptune, but binoculars or a telescope will provide the best view.

Mercury will look like a bright star in the morning sky from June 27 to July 16, and October 18 to November 1. It will shine in the night sky from May 3 to May 24, August 31 to September 21 and November 29 to December 31.

Venus, our closest neighbor in the solar system, will appear in the western sky at dusk on the evenings of May 24 to December 31. It's the second brightest object in our sky after the moon.

Mars makes its reddish appearance in the morning sky between November 24 and December 31 and will be visible in the evening sky between January 1 and August 22.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is the third brightest object in our sky. It will be on display in the morning sky between February 17 and August 19. Look for it in the evenings of August 20 to December 31 -- but it will be at its brightest from August 8 to September 2.

Saturn's rings are only visible through a telescope, but the planet itself can still be seen with the naked eye on the mornings of February 10 to August 1 and the evenings of August 2 to December 31. It will be at its brightest between August 1 to 4.

Binoculars or a telescope will help you spot the greenish glow of Uranus on the mornings of May 16 to November 3 and the evenings of January 1 to April 12 and November 4 to December 31 -- but at its brightest between August 28 to December 31.

And our most distant neighbor in the solar system, Neptune will be visible through a telescope on the mornings of March 27 to September 13 and the evenings of September 14 to December 31. It will be at its brightest between July 19 and November 8.

Scale of Tigray horror adds to pressure on Ethiopian leader
Emmanuel Akinwotu 

Pressure is mounting on Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, as the scale of horrors from his war against the northern Tigray region gradually emerge, revealing massacres, mass sexual violence and fears of ethnic cleansing.

© Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP 

Orthodox Christian refugees who fled the conflict in Tigray pray \

at a camp in Hamdeyat near the Sudan-Ethiopia border.

Ethiopia has for months insisted that its army’s operations, which began in October last year, have officially ended and solely targeted the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leadership and forces, which ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades before Abiy came to power.

Abiy’s government has repeatedly played down the most severe allegations against its forces in Tigray, and denied reports that Eritrean armed forces were active in Tigray fighting the TPLF.

Yet last week he finally conceded that Eritrea’s soldiers were “at the border area” between Tigray and Ethiopia’s former foe turned ally. Eritrea’s army was now retreating from Ethiopia, he said. Eritrea’s government has not publicly acknowledged any role in Tigray or confirmed its troops would retreat.

The independent Ethiopian Human Rights Commission last week said its investigations found over 100 people in the historic Tigrayan city of Axum were killed by Eritrean soldiers in November, confirming earlier revelations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

© Provided by The Guardian Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed, right, and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki at Asmara airport last week. Photograph: Aron Simeneh/AFP/Getty Images


Reports confirming atrocities by Eritrean soldiers present in Tigray and revelations of the devastation of the past five months have fuelled international condemnation of both Ethiopia and Eritrea. The EU placed sanctions on Eritrea this week, amid concerns that many of the attacks could amount to crimes against humanity.

Reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have revealed several massacres and an explosion of sexual violence, torture and destruction of Tigrayan cultural and religious monuments and property.

Since aid groups and observers were granted access earlier this month, there has been a drip feed of shocking revelations. Last week, the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said its staff had witnessed extrajudicial killings on the road from Mekelle to Adigrat by Ethiopian troops. “We are horrified by the continued violence in Tigray, Ethiopia. This includes the extrajudicial killings of at least four men who were dragged off public buses and executed by soldiers while our staff members were present, on 23 March,” said Karline Kleijer, its head of emergency programmes.

Earlier this month, MSF said most of the more than 100 health facilities it had visited across Tigray had been looted, vandalised and destroyed in a deliberate and widespread attack on healthcare. What Abiy has insisted was a military operation against “criminals” has instead emerged as a bitter conflict waged against millions of civilians, with mass attacks and sexual violence driven by ethnic and historic regional divisions.

The military campaign against the TPLF, whom Abiy accused of attacking federal military camps and aiming to destabilise the country, has quickly recast the image of one of Africa’s youngest leaders who was awarded the Nobel peace prize for ending the long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Amid a telecommunications blackout and the restricted movement of aid groups and international observers, many fear the true toll of the conflict may never be ascertained.

The United Nations, United States, European Union and aid groups have condemned violence in the region in recent weeks.

Thousands are thought to have died, with vast swathes internally displaced in the mountainous, agriculture region of five million people.

Nearly one million people remain inaccessible to aid groups, according to the UN, amid armed conflict with TPLF forces, which Ethiopia still maintains has officially ended.Earlier this month, in a leaked recording of a meeting between foreign diplomats and an Ethiopian army general, Yohannes Tesfamariam, he described the conflict in Tigray as a “dirty war” and civilian victims as “defenceless” in the most significant acknowledgement from Ethiopia’s authorities that fighting and threats to civilians were ongoing, particularly in Western Tigray.

The UN last week condemned “horrific forms of sexual violence” with more than 500 cases of rape reported in just five clinics in Tigray, and the numbers of actual cases likely to be far higher. “Women say they have been raped by armed actors, they also told stories of gang rape, rape in front of family members and men being forced to rape their own family members under the threat of violence,” explained Wafia Said, the deputy UN aid coordinator in Ethiopia in a briefing to member states.

On March 10, the US secretary of state condemned the violence, ramping up pressure on Ethiopia to end atrocities in Tigray. Following investigations, Antony Blinken said he had seen “very credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities,” and that “forces from Eritrea and Amhara must leave and be replaced by ‘a force that will not abuse the human rights of the people of Tigray or commit acts of ethnic cleansing’.” Ethiopia dismissed Blinken’s statement as unfounded but said it would permit an investigation by the African Union.

On Monday the EU announced sanctions on Eritrea, dismissed by the country’s ministry of foreign affairs as “a futile attempt to drive a wedge between Eritrea and Ethiopia.”

Nearly 70,000 refugees have fled to camps in neighbouring Sudan since November, some suffering physical injuries from attacks in Tigray, others suffering from the horrors they witnessed before they escaped.

Before 26-year-old Elsa Berhe fled to Hamdayet town in Sudan, she was a midwife in Adwa, eastern Tigray and lived a comfortable life. In November, shelling and fighting destroyed much of Adwa. By early this year, several hospitals and clinics were destroyed, looted and taken over by Ethiopian forces. “I was secretly delivering home-to-home services for pregnant women,” she said. “There is gunfire every day, there is questioning every day,” she said, from the camp overlooking the Sudan’s border with Ethiopia. Attacks on medical officials had driven her to leave, she said.

“I saw an ambulance with a patient and a nurse,” when they were stopped by Ethiopian soldiers. “They killed the driver and the nurse and they drove away.” Later, she witnessed Eritrean forces gang rape a woman, Berhe said.“The international community has done nothing to stop the war. Destruction is happening, rape is happening daily and civilians are being killed.”

According to Adem Abebe, an expert at the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the horrific nature of the conflict so far will probably lead to the TPLF remaining a long-term threat to Abiy. “Unless there is a negotiated settlement, the conflict will definitely be prolonged. But Abiy may now think that he has pushed the TPLF into a corner and that he is in a much stronger position to negotiate.”

Federal NDP calls on government to eliminate for-profit long-term care

OTTAWA — New Democrats are seeking the support of the House of Commons in calling on the Liberal government to eliminate for-profit long-term care.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The NDP tabled a motion Monday that calls on the government to take the complex step of transitioning existing for-profit homes to not-for-profit operations by 2030. It also urges the government to work with provinces and territories to stop licensing new for-profit homes.

The NDP unveiled its proposal for the long-term care sector earlier this year, presenting it as a potential election promise as parties gear up for a possible 2021 election campaign.

At the time, New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh said an NDP government would bring together provincial and territorial leaders, experts and workers to set national standards for nursing homes, benchmarks that would be tied to $5 billion in federal funding.

"We know that for-profit means less care. It means less hours of care. It means less quality food," Singh said at a virtual press conference Monday.

"Let us remove profit from long-term care, beginning with Revera."

The motion includes a call to immediately turn Revera — a company that runs more than 500 seniors' homes in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom — from a for-profit chain owned by a Crown pension fund into a publicly managed entity.

Seniors Minister Deb Schulte said she opposes the motion, pointing to provincial jurisdiction over health care.

"The federal government does not have the legal authority to do what the NDP is proposing," Schulte said in a Twitter thread Monday morning that was retweeted by federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu.

During House debate Monday afternoon, Hajdu reiterated the federal government's pledge to establish national standards, which would be applied in separate deals struck with provinces that want to meet them. The government has not laid out what those benchmarks should be, though the health minister stressed the need to boost wages and working conditions for personal support workers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he respects provincial authority when it comes to long-term care, and supports the sector through billions of dollars in added funding allocated to the provinces during the COVID-19 crisis.

Singh did not offer a projected cost of phasing out long-term care, which could climb into the billions if community agencies and municipalities seek funding to run more homes and provide more beds.

Another hurdle is that nursing home operators would still own the buildings and real estate even if provinces opt against renewing their licences, making for potentially pricey government purchases.

"We will work with the parliamentary budget office and other levels to ascertain the full cost of it," Singh told reporters.

Some lawmakers bristled at the prospect of federal politicians encroaching on provincial turf.

"Provinces have been clear. They don't want national standards," Bloc Québécois MP Louise Chabot said during debate in the House.

A vote on the NDP motion, which is not binding on the minority Liberal government, is expected Tuesday.

Multiple recent studies have found that for-profit nursing homes were more likely to experience more widespread virus outbreaks, as well as more deaths.

"Even before COVID-19 we have a litany of research that shows that, on the whole, these homes perform worse than non-profit and municipal homes," said Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos, a long-term care advocate and professor at Ontario Tech University.

She said at the press conference that for-profit residents are more likely to wind up in hospital and to die within six months of admission to a home.

“They hire less full-time permanent staff to boot, and they also pay their staff less, which results in a revolving door of workers," Stamatopoulos said.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) — the Crown pension plan manager that owns Revera — said the funding model for long-term care is a key public policy debate. "PSP Investments and Revera will continue working with all levels of government to find the right solutions for the LTC industry and discuss lessons learned from the ongoing pandemic," said spokeswoman Verena Garofalo.

More than two-thirds of Canada's COVID-19 deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities, with the percentage breaching 80 per cent during the first wave.

In Ontario, where the second wave has proven even deadlier than the first in nursing homes, an independent commission has been convened to examine the virus's effect on the sector. The commission is slated to deliver its final report at the end of April.

More than a quarter of the country's 2,039 long-term care homes are for-profit — 58 per cent in Ontario, the highest proportion of any province — according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Ottawa resident Aaron Gruntke says he lost his 59-year-old mother Linda Lee Gruntke less than five months after she entered a for-profit care facility in Toronto.

She suffered numerous falls, including one that required 30 stitches and a three-day stay in hospital, he said at Monday's news conference organized by the NDP.

"Sometimes she didn’t get medications because there was no nurse available to administer them. Other times she was overmedicated. She once wore the same bandage on her leg for three days straight," Gruntke said, adding that he didn't blame "overworked and underpaid" staff.

His mother complained about respiratory issues for three days before staff found her unconscious in her room and sent her to hospital on Sept. 26, he said. Three days later she had a heart attack, and died on Oct. 3.

"The difference in care between for-profit and not-for-profit is like night and day," Gruntke said, citing the "warmth and kindness" with which staff attend to his 93-year-old grandmother, who lives in a not-for-profit home. "Maybe if my mother had the proper treatment she would still be here today."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2021.

Christopher Reynolds and Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press

Edmonton research group uses board game and phone app to fight racism

A board game, phone app and a subscription box for guided self-reflection are among a set of tools developed by an Edmonton community research group to fight racism.

YEG HAS LONG BEEN A GLOBAL GAMING DESIGN CITY

BECAUSE ITS FRIGGEN COLD SIX MONTHS OF THE YEAR

BUT NOW THAT IT IS WARMING WE WILL HAVE TO SEE

© Provided by Edmonton Journal The Exploring Wahkohtowin board game on the history of Treaty 6. It's one of several prototypes created by Edmonton-based Shift Lab 2.0 to address racism in approachable and creative ways. Submitted image.

Shift Lab 2.0 facilitator Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse said the social innovation lab tools invite people to explore their biases. They look to find that “sweet spot” where someone can reconsider in a positive, inviting way. The focus is on building relationships.

“If you care about someone, you’re less likely to harm them or hurt them or hate them. Racism is fear and harm that perpetuates hate, and so what are the opposite of those things? Kindness, compassion, friendship,” she said. “We recognize reducing racism isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take many things, many people, many years. But we are committed to getting there, and this is one of the ways that will help.”

The tools currently being tested include the Exploring Wahkohtowin board game on the history of Treaty 6, a subscription box called You Need This Box , which aims to help a person reflect on and challenge systemic racism, and a Reflection Pool phone app to identify biases and teach empathy. They’ve also created a sticker and coffee-sleeve awareness campaign about treaty relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

Shift Lab 2.0 organizers expect to hold a formal launch for the set of tools later this year.

© PHOTOGRAPHY BY ABHNAV The Exploring Wahkohtowin board game on the history of Treaty 6. It’s one of several prototypes created by Edmonton-based Shift Lab 2.0 to address racism in approachable and creative ways. Submitted image.

The number of hate crimes has risen locally in recent years.

Since December, there have been at least six attacks on Black Muslim women in Edmonton. Edmonton police received 60 reports of hate crimes last year, while there were 80 reports between January and November 2020 in Calgary.

Anti-Asian hate crimes have also been on the rise in Canada and the U.S. over the past year, and hate is expected by many to have motivated the killing of six Asian women in Atlanta, Ga. last week.

Another prototype from the lab is a brochure teaching bystanders how they can intervene in overtly racist encounters. It’s currently being revised to address issues specific to recent assaults on Black Muslim women.

When complete, lab facilitator Sameer Singh said it’s meant to give people tools to help them de-escalate, react and support people targeted by racism and harassment in a helpful way.

“You never know when there’s going to be a racist incident or harassment on a bus,” he said. “The idea is to provide muscle memory.”

“If you read it, it might just be in the back of your mind so that if something does happen tomorrow or a month from now, you might feel like you’re in a better position to do something positive and help somebody who’s being harassed because of the colour of their skin or religion or even their gender.”

Shift Lab 2.0 was facilitated and funded by the Skills Action Society and Edmonton Community Foundation.

Lauren Boothby 

POSTMEDIA

3/22/2021
lboothby@postmedia.com

“You Need This Box” is a subscription box aimed at teaching to understand and combat racism on a personal level. It’s one of several prototypes created by Edmonton-based Shift Lab 2.0 to address racism in approachable and creative ways. Submitted image.

Romanian police investigate death threats against prominent Jewish actor


BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian police were investigating on Sunday death threats made against award-winning film and theatre star Maia Morgenstern and her children at the start of Passover celebrations

.

© Reuters/Reuters Photographer FILE PHOTO: ROMANIAN "PASSION "

ACTRESS MORGENSTERN ATTENDS PRESS CONFERENCE IN BUCHAREST.

Morgenstern, who played the figure of Mary in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and runs the Jewish State Theatre in Bucharest, published an email she received in which the author threatens to violently kill Morgenstern and her children, as well as set fire to the Jewish theatre and its staff.

The email was signed "on behalf of the far right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR)", although its leader George Simion condemned the threat, saying it was not issued by the party, and urged authorities to quickly find and punish its author.

Police said they were tracking the IP address of the email sender.

The ultra-nationalist party AUR was formed a year ago and surprised in a December general election to become the fourth-largest party in parliament.

Unlike some of its central and European peers, Romania did not have a mainstream party supporting far-right ideas until December's parliamentary election, although these had surfaced in well-established parties too.

Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany until August 1944, when it changed sides, and hundreds of thousands of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and Roma were killed in areas it controlled.

The European Union state has only in recent years begun to come to terms with its role in the Holocaust, admitting for the first time in 2003 that it took part. Sensitivity towards the Holocaust and knowledge of it remain patchy.

(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Government Reports Say UFOs Broke Sound Barrier Without Sonic Boom

© Department of Defense Ex-Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe says the Pentagon has reports of UFOs breaking the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom. What else do they show?

VIDEOS AT THE END

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News the Pentagon has many reports about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), including UFO sightings that haven’t been made public.

Ratcliffe said the reports contain sightings of objects making movements that“are hard to replicate” and“traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”

By law, the Pentagon must report more information on UFO sightings in June.

A former U.S. intelligence official recently revealed the Pentagon is sitting on“lots of reports” about what it officially calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), better known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

John Ratcliffe, who served as the Director of National Intelligence Community from May 2020 to January 2021, told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Friday the reports include sightings of objects that“frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.” Ratcliffe said both U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots and satellite imagery have spotted the UAP.

The objects reportedly made“movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom,” Ratcliffe said.“In short, things that we are observing that are difficult to explain.”

When an aircraft increases its speed, pressure waves build up on it and eventually coalesce into a single shockwave. When the plane outruns that shockwave and travels faster than the speed of sound in air, it causes a sudden change in pressure, which in turn creates the sonic boom. There’s no publicly available scientific data to suggest any aircraft can break the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom; while engineers can take steps to try to reduce sonic booms, physics says it’s impossible to outright eliminate it.

© Ensign John Gay, U.S. Navy U.S. Navy F/A-18 flying faster than the speed of sound. The white cloud is formed by decreased air pressure and temperature around the tail of the aircraft.

Ratcliffe admitted the Pentagon simply can’t rationalize some of the reported sightings:
“We always look for a plausible explanation. You know, weather can cause disturbances, visual disturbances, sometimes we wonder whether or not our adversaries have technologies that are a little bit further down the road than we thought or that we realized. But there are instances where we don’t have good explanations for some of the things that we’ve seen.”

Ratcliffe told Bartiromo he wanted to“get this information out and declassify it” before he left office in January, when Donald Trump’s presidential administration gave way to Joe Biden’s.“But we weren’t able to get it down into an unclassified format that we could talk about quickly enough,” Ratcliffe said.

It’s unclear why Ratcliffe has decided to speak out about UAP now, although the former Director of Intelligence’s remarks may foreshadow a major report the Pentagon is set to release in the coming months. Indeed, 2021 promises to be one of the most significant years ever for the advancement of UFO disclosure—and that follows a year in which the U.S. Navy officially released three videos that show UFOs are genuine.

In August 2020, the Department of Defense (DoD) officially approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). The task force will investigate the sightings of UAP.

The UAPTF is the first official government program affiliated with UFO research since a 2000s-era unit that analyzed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other UAP lost its funding in 2012, even though multiple sources confirmed with Popular Mechanics that the unit remained active in secrecy after its shuttering.

The DoD formed the UAPTF to“improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of [UAP],” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough told Popular Mechanics at the time.“The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, and catalog [UAP] that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”





4/4 SLIDES © amazon.com


In June 2020’s Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) authorized appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for the UAPTF and supported its efforts to reveal any links that UAP“have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations.”

In the IAA, the Select Committee on Intelligence said it“remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the federal government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on [UAP], despite the potential threat,” and so it directed the task force to report its findings on UAP,“including observed airborne objects that have not been identified,” within 180 days.Terms)

When Trump signed the coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December 2020, it contained the IAA for Fiscal Year 2021, which means the UAPTF must report its findings to Congress by June 25.

While we don’t know what the task force will reveal in its first report, Ratcliffe’s remarks could offer hints. It’s noteworthy, for example, that he mentioned both U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots’ encounters with UAP. The Navy, of course, has confirmed three videos taken by Navy pilots show UAP, but the service also said the footage should have never been released to the public in the first place.

The Air Force, on the other hand, has largely been quiet regarding UAP. A former Director of National Intelligence’s admission that the Air Force has also seen UAP is significant, and may suggest the service plays a larger role in the forthcoming UAPTF report.

Additionally, Ratcliffe emphasized the Pentagon’s documented UAP sightings go beyond“just a pilot or just a satellite, or some intelligence collection,” he said.“Usually, we have multiple sensors that are picking up on these things.”

That tracks with what government officials who have access to such documents revealed to The Debrief last year:“Some of the best evidence acquired has come from measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), rather than from videos or still images,” one source told The Debrief’s Tim McMillan, a contributor to Popular Mechanics.

While we wait to see what’s in the UAPTF’s report, Ratcliffe made it clear to Bartiromo that he’s just as eager for disclosure as the public is.

“I think it will be healthy for as much of this information to get out there as possible so that the American people can see some of the things that we’ve been dealing with,” he said.

Eruption in Iceland may mark the start of decades of volcanic activity

Robin George Andrews 

3/25/2021

After being shaken by 15 months of increasingly disruptive earthquakes, including about 50,000 in the past three weeks, Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula is finally experiencing the volcanic eruption that many geologists suspected was on its way. After nearly 800 years without an eruption, this southwestern strip of the country is experiencing lava flows that experts say have been a long time coming.

© Photograph by Jeremie Richard, AFP via Getty Images Lava flows from the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano some 40 km west of the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, on March 21, 2021. - Weekend hikers took the opportunity Sunday to inspect the area where a volcano erupted in Iceland on March 19, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said, as a red cloud lit up the night sky and a no-fly zone was established in the area.

On Friday, March 19, at around 8:45 p.m. local time, molten rock breached the surface in a valley near a flat-topped mountain named Fagradalsfjall, in the region of Geldingadalur, six miles from the nearest town. Incandescent spatter erupted along a crack in the earth, scorching the soil as small lava fountains illuminated the dark landscape.

The eruption involves a relatively small amount of lava confined to a series of valleys, making it unlikely that any population centers will be threatened. This type of molten rock is very fluid and trapped gasses easily escape, and it’s not erupting into water or ice, so it won’t become especially explosive, generate a sustained ash plume, or fling any sizable volcanic blocks across the region. Scientists believe the eruption will persist for a few more days or weeks before fizzling out.

But this modest eruption could mark the beginning of something bigger. Evidence from both historical accounts and ancient lava flows shows that whenever this region has experienced a major uptick in seismic activity, intermittent eruptions followed for around 100 years.

“The signs are that it’s reawakening,” says Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist at Lancaster University.

The Geldingadalur eruption therefore provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the long-term volcanic activity of southwest Iceland. Scientists are scrambling to monitor what may be the opening salvo in a series of volcanic volleys, which could provide clues about why the peninsula flares up just once every eight centuries.
The case of the missing magma

Sitting on a landward portion of the continuously spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 17 miles southwest of the capital city Reykjavík, is no stranger to earthquakes. But since late 2019, temblors have become more frequent and more energetic. Icelanders on the peninsula, particularly those in the coastal town of Grindavík, have had trouble sleeping lately due to the constant shaking.

This heightened seismic activity is thought to represent a transition from a gradual opening of the rift to a considerably more dramatic phase when both sides of the peninsula are rapidly pulled apart. When a geologic rift quickly pulls the land apart like this, it creates an empty space, and magma rushes up to fill it in.

On March 3, acoustic signals associated with the injection of magma into the shallow crust emanated from between the mountain Fagradalsfjall and a series of fissures that erupted long ago. A new eruption seemed extremely likely—but no lava followed, and the acoustic signals vanished, says Thorbjörg Ágústsdóttir, a seismologist at Iceland GeoSurvey.

Instead, the sheet of magma, known as a dyke, wandered about underground for the next few weeks. Seismic activity and the changing shape of the ground allowed scientists to roughly track its movements. They caught it oscillating between the northeast and southwest of the peninsula, causing cracks to appear in the earth above as it went.

“I called it the dithering dyke because it didn’t seem to know what to do,” McGarvie says. It appeared to be searching, to no avail, for a place it could breach the surface.

Over the past few weeks, the seismic activity in the region declined, and most dykes cool and solidify before getting a chance to erupt. This led some scientists to suspect an eruption would not occur after all.

Iceland’s uppermost crust is peculiar, however, acting somewhat elastically—meaning it’s a little closer to toffee than hard candy. The crust in this area can stretch a little to make room for magma, allowing the dyke to infiltrate the rock just below the surface without causing violent fractures and producing those telltale acoustic signals.

This stealth mode is typical for eruptions that happen along fissures, such as those along the peninsula. Scientists in Iceland had “just been in the field, and all of a sudden, the ground is opening,” Ágústsdóttir says. Apparently the waning seismic activity in this region, instead of being a sign of calmer days to come, could in fact be a precursor to an eruption.

A long-awaited eruption

On March 19, the Icelandic Meteorological Office picked up a few low-frequency earthquakes that may have come from magma moving toward the surface—but these were very subtle events, Ágústsdóttir says. With no way to know when and where an eruption would happen, local authorities continued to tell people to stay away from the fissure-riddled area.

That evening, lava began erupting close to Fagradalsfjall, inside Geldingadalur, a natural depression whose name means Eunuch Valley—possibly a reference to early settlers’ practice of castrating animals in the region. After failing to find an escape hatch to the northeast or southwest, the dyke apparently “broke through in the middle, because both directions were kind of jammed,” says Tobias Dürig, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland.

A webcam on a nearby ridge first caught sight of the lava. A Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched to the site, and the pilot quickly spotted the embers of lava spitting and hissing at the sky.

Lava first poured out of a meandering fissure 1,650 feet long, but over the weekend, the eruption focused its output on single spot, building a steep, towering cauldron of freshly cooled rock. Smooth rivers of lava crept around blockier, rubble-like lava. Lava flowing at a steady pace caused the cone to suffer a few partial collapses as it flung blobs of lava across the scorched earth.

The dyke of magma is small, just over four miles long, and the eruption is confined to a valley that is surrounded by more valleys, preventing lava from escaping the area and threatening any population centers. Sulfur dioxide, a common volcanic gas, is being emitted by the eruption, however, and even small quantities can irritate the lungs of those with respiratory conditions such as asthma. But so far, the wind is blowing the volcanic gas away from populated areas.

Scientists say one possible concern is that a new fissure could suddenly and unexpectedly open up near the current one, ambushing anyone in the area. “That could easily happen, and that could happen fast, and it would not be a good place to be,” Dürig says.

Studying the inferno

Overall, however, scientists believe this will be a largely unhazardous eruption. Thanks to easy access to the area, researchers are throwing their entire toolbox at the eruption, seeing it as the best chance they have ever had to understand the unusual tectonics and volcanism of the region.

Some have scooped up lava and rushed it to a lab, hoping to unravel the specific chemistry of the material. Dürig has flown back and forth over the eruption, using radar to determine how thick the lava flows are and estimate how much lava is erupting.

Evgenia Ilyinskaya, a volcanologist at the University of Leeds, went up to the eruption this weekend wearing a backpack full of instruments that analyzed the compounds gushing out of the fissure.

“It’s a very special thing to get close to an eruption site,” Ilyinskaya says. During the eruption’s beginning, she was greeted with a cacophony of booms and whooshes under her feet. “It shakes you to your core,” she says. “This is something that’s really, really powerful. You feel very small and very insignificant.”

Against official advice, thousands of people living in the peninsula have gathered around the eruption site, treating the ridges as an amphitheater. One group lingered for too long, then got lost looking for their cars in the dark. Someone was also caught trying to fry eggs and bacon atop the lava, predictably with little success.

While volcanologists are taking the opportunity to study this eruption, archaeologists are scrambling to figure out if the lava threatens any significant sites. Based on historical records, experts believe a burial site thought to date back more than 1,000 years, perhaps belonging to a notable figure, could be right in the path of the eruption. According to local news reports, archaeologist Oddgeir Isaksen of the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland sped to the scene in a helicopter shortly after the eruption began, but he was not able to find evidence of the burial site before lava overran the area.

A century of activity?

The eruption is probably going to peter out in the coming days or weeks, and the bigger earthquakes keeping people awake may also drop off for a bit. “A small eruption still releases some pressure,” Ágústsdóttir says.

But there are hints that the fireworks are far from over. “The amount of seismic energy release for this small eruption is disproportionately high,” McGarvie says. There could have been a significant amount of tectonic shifting across the peninsula, meaning additional pockets of magma could make their way to the surface.

Based on the geological history of the region and studies of somewhat similar eruptions elsewhere in Iceland, another eruption from a different fissure in Reykjanes Peninsula is a distinct possibility, Ilyinskaya says. But this could transpire in days, weeks, months, or even years. It may involve a similar amount of magma as the current eruption, or it could release significantly more.

The possibility of future eruptions is underscored by the fact that the type of seismic shaking leading up to last week’s eruption has happened before—three times before, in fact, in the past few thousand years. Historical accounts and layers of ancient volcanic rock suggest that each time this area experiences a significant increase in earthquakes, it culminates in several decades of eruptions, jumping from fissure to fissure all over the peninsula.

The small and relatively safe eruption occurring now therefore provides a stellar opportunity for scientists and emergency managers to prepare for possible bursts of lava to come. “If this is the start,” Ágústsdóttir says, “this is good training.”