OGN Friday

May 9, 2025
3 min read

Concluding the week with a collection of positive news nuggets.

the California flag featuring a grizzly bear — On the flag, but not the land

California Grizzlies

Though the grizzly bear is prominently featured on the California flag, it's been a little over a century since anyone within the state spotted one in the wild. That could soon change, per a new study outlining a potential reintroduction plan for the apex predators. “For a hundred years, people have been saying, ‘Ah, it’s over.’ But science actually shows that’s not the case,” Peter Alagona, an environmental historian who led the grizzly bear feasibility report, told The Guardian. His team estimates that the state could host up to 1,700 bears across three areas: the northwest forest near the Oregon border, the southern Sierra Nevada, and a southwestern region near Santa Barbara. The sheer amount of space in California makes a grizzly comeback possible, Alagona added, noting the effort “would be a slow, deliberate, and careful process.”

Illustration of the potential 9th planet — Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Is There a 9th Planet?

Scientists believe our solar system may have a mysterious ninth planet - and no, it’s not Pluto (which was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006). For about a century, astronomers have had a hunch that another planet has been waiting to be discovered. And one group of researchers recently gathered some celestial clues indicating that this 'Planet Nine' is more than hypothetical, per a new paper accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. The potential planet in question is about the size of Neptune, and it’s so deep into the solar system that it could take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun. The Earth, for reference, takes one year to complete the trip. “If the existence of Planet Nine can be confirmed by observations in the near future, it will improve our understanding of the history and structure of the entire solar system in early stages,” the team concluded in the paper.

Scenes of Gratitude

Yesterday, twenty-two Canadian WWII veterans were greeted by thousands in Netherlands to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Nazi Germany. The city of Apeldoorn was liberated by Canadian troops on April 17, 1945, and thousands lined the streets and draped Canadian flags from their balconies to welcome and celebrate their heroism with a parade.

The Washington Post building facade — The Washington Post building

Taking a Stand

A longtime Washington Post editorial cartoonist who quit in protest after editors cut her sketch criticizing the paper’s owner just won a Pulitzer Prize, reports AP. Ann Telnaes won for “delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions” for her cartoon depicting a group of media executives bowing before then President-elect Trump, offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Ann Telnaes won for “delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years,” according to the Pulitzer announcement. OGN would love to show you the cartoon, but sadly we can't.

Seawater Solution?

A pilot project in the UK is capturing carbon from seawater to help combat climate change. Some scientists believe that a better alternative to capturing carbon from the air would be to capture carbon from seawater, because the ocean is the planet’s largest carbon sink, absorbing 25 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, reports CNN.

US Wind Energy

Democratic attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit in Boston federal court to attempt to block President Donald Trump’s plan to suspend permitting and leasing of new wind energy projects. Plaintiffs say the action unlawfully threatens the wind industry, a major source of clean energy. “This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, as The New York Times reported.

James said the move threatened “the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments” and was “delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.”

"Love is the only force capable of changing the world." Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals