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Ever since the Bennu samples returned to Earth on September 24, 2023, we and our colleagues on four continents have spent hundreds of hours studying them.

The instruments on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made observations of reflected light that revealed the most abundant minerals and organics when it was near asteroid Bennu. Our analyses in the laboratory found that the compositions of these samples lined up with those observations.

The samples are mostly water-rich clay, with sulfide, carbonate, and iron oxide minerals. These are the same minerals found in CI chondrites like Revelstoke. The discovery of rare minerals within the Bennu samples, however, surprised both of us. Despite our decades of experience studying meteorites, we have never seen many of these minerals.

We found minerals dominated by sodium, including carbonates, sulfates, chlorides, and fluorides, as well as potassium chloride and magnesium phosphate. These minerals don’t form just when water and rock react. They form when water evaporates.

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Friedrich Merz, her successor as leader of the country’s conservatives, for pushing through proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the far-right AfD.

In a rare intervention in public affairs since stepping down from politics in December 2021, Merkel said that Merz, who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, had in effect performed a U-turn.

On her website, she wrote that Merz, head of the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance, had said in a speech last November that he was against passing policies with the support of the generally shunned AfD, even it was by “accident”.

She said she stood by the longstanding conviction that there should never be any association between the mainstream parties and the AfD.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has officially triggered an early provincial election for Feb. 27 after meeting with Ontario's lieutenant-governor, his office confirmed.

Ford visited Lt.-Gov. Edith Dumont on Tuesday afternoon to ask her to dissolve the 43rd parliament of the Province of Ontario. She accepted his request.

Ford has said he needs a new mandate from the electorate in order to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump, something he repeated at a news conference Tuesday morning ahead of his visit to the lieutenant-governor.

As it stands today, January 27, there are 41 current and eight future judicial vacancies. That’s less than half of the over 100 vacancies Trump inherited the first time around. And unlike in 2017, when Trump started with 17 vacancies on the courts of appeals, the vast majority of these openings—43 of them—are for district court seats. Thanks to then-Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin’s stubborn insistence on adhering to the blue slip tradition, thus allowing Republicans a de facto veto over Biden’s nominees in red states, nearly all of these vacancies are in states with two Republican senators. With a sycophantic Republican-controlled Senate at his beck and call, Trump should have no issues filling those vacancies.

Since Trump’s election, only four Article III judges–all district judges appointed by President George W. Bush–have created new current or future vacancies for Trump to fill: Judges Frank Whitney of the Western District of North Carolina, L. Scott Coogler of the Northern District of Alabama, Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky, and James Browning of the District of New Mexico. Looking ahead to where more vacancies may arise, there are 72 Republican-appointed judges—26 appeals court and 46 district court judges—currently eligible to retire, and 43 more—nine and 34, respectively—who will become eligible to retire by the end of 2028.

The Climate Superfund Act made Vermont the first state in the nation to adopt a federal superfund model—requiring polluters to pay for damages—and apply the proceeds to costs from climate harms. The lawsuit, filed Dec. 30, came just days after New York state passed its own version of the law. Massachusetts and Maryland legislators have re-introduced similar climate superfund bills for their states’ 2025 legislative sessions, and a Maine state senator has begun exploring a polluters-pay policy for the state.

The timing, so soon after the passage of New York’s law, leads advocates to think that the lawsuit is, at least initially, a scare tactic to discourage more copycat laws.

Workers at a Whole Foods in Philadelphia are on track to be the first in company history to be represented by a labor union after a majority voted Monday to join the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

According to the National Labor Relations Board, 130 workers voted to be represented by UFCW, while 100 voted against, out of nearly 300 eligible employees. Now, said NLRB's Teddy Quinn, "The employer must begin bargaining in good faith with the union."

The development comes two months after a majority of workers at the sprawling, flagship location signed cards expressing interest in collectively bargaining. The election was facilitated by the National Labor Relations Board, which under former President Joe Biden adopted a rule expediting such votes, limiting the time employers have to engage in anti-union advocacy; before the vote, workers had accused Whole Foods and its parent company, Amazon, of having turned union-busting into a "science," claiming employees were retaliated against for organizing.

Filipino digital workers launched a coalition to lobby for labor and free speech protections in the workplace as artificial intelligence is deployed. The AI tools raise new risks, and the firing of a worker who spoke to Rest of World in November signals an industrywide “code of silence” around the impact of AI on the workplace, the group said.

“We call on the government for a proactive and inclusive policy-making, as workers face threats of job losses, diminishing wages, and other harms,” Lean Porquia, convenor of the coalition, said in a press statement. Porquia is also head of research for the BPO Industry Employees’ Network, an organization focused on the rights of business process outsourcing workers.

The Coalition of Digital Employees – Artificial Intelligence, or Code AI, was prompted by Rest of World reporting that led to investigations and the termination of a worker, Code AI members said at a press briefing in Manila. The report, published in November 2024, described advanced AI tools deployed by Concentrix Corporation and Accenture — including AI co-pilots and sentiment analysis deployed for American Express and Meta, Facebook’s parent company — that made work both more efficient and demanding, according to the workers.