Amateur astronomer George Hall captured this image of an apparent impact on Jupiter while recording video telescope observations of the planet on Sept. 10, 2012, from Dallas Texas.Early in the morning on Monday September 10th, Oregon-based amateur astronomer Dan Peterson had his telescope trained on Jupiter — the largest planet in our solar system — and spotted a bright flash in the planet's upper atmosphere. He reported the sighting to the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO), and after the news quickly made its way around the Internet, the sighting was confirmed by another amateur astronomer in Dallas, Texas. George Hall had also been observing Jupiter that morning, and found that his webcam had recorded images of the impact.

After the news and images spread, astronomers eagerly waited for nightfall so that they could aim their telescopes at the giant planet, in hopes of spotting any scar left by the impact. The images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as it broke up and impacted with Jupiter back in July 1994 show huge dark scars in the planet's upper atmosphere as dramatic evidence of the power of the impact.

Images of the planet poured in from around

Today in Hamilton, Ontario, teachers are wearing black to protest Bill 115, new legislation that freezes their wages for two years, cuts sick days in half (and ends their ability to bank sick days) and bans striking for two years.

The bill, known as the Putting Students First Act, passed Tuesday morning and imposes a contract on Ontario elementary and secondary school teachers, as well as 50,000 support staff, CBC News reports.

In response, Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federations (OSSTF) local 21 bargaining unit has asked its members to refrain from volunteer and extracurricular activities today, in addition to donning black.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is asking teachers to not participate in school-based or system-level meetings on Mondays. The protest has been dubbed "McGuinty Mondays."

The owner of the Banff Tea Company is worried that the arrival of a national chain competitor will put her out of business. When I was growing up in Calgary a trip to Banff was a long Sunday drive, an eternity in the back seat of my mother's smoke-filled Volkswagen Beetle as she and my grandmother puffed away, windows often closed against the chilly mountain air.

I looked forward to cruising through the national park gates, and not just because it meant the ordeal was almost over. Banff was another world: the hot springs, bison grazing in a pasture beside the highway, the chance of spotting a bear or a big-horn sheep.

The quaint town, with its stone-and-timber storefronts, interested me only as far as deciding where we might stop for coffee and pastries before heading home.

The town of Banff was always a tourist trap — excuse me, destination — developed more than century ago as a scenic stop on the Canadian Pacific Railway route to the Pacific Ocean. But it wrestles with the kind of face it wants to present to visitors.

Banff council this week voted narrowly to hold a public debate on whether to limit the

A protester shouts slogans during a march against student tuition fee hikes in downtown Montreal, August 22, 2012.So maybe those pot-banging students in Quebec were right after all.

A new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives warns post-secondary education tuition fees are becoming increasingly unaffordable without forcing students to take on heavy debt loads.

According to The Canadian Press, the report from the left-wing think tank shows that since 1990, average tuition and compulsory fees for undergrads have risen by 6.2 per cent a year — three times the rate of inflation.

A year of study at a Canadian university now costs $6,186 on average, not including other expenses such as books, food and a lodging. The centre predicted that based on past trends and announced government plans, that average would rise to $7,330 in four years.

The report found Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest tuition at $2,861 for the 2011-12 academic year, expected to rise to $2,893 for 2015-16.

Quebec is second at $3.278, with fees estimated to rise to $3,664, or $4,472, had the defeated Liberal

Even though the Canadian penny is going out of circulation, the Canadian Mint will charge for using its image.The Royal Canadian Mint is pinching Dave Gunning's planned paean to the penny.

The Halifax folk singer's upcoming album, No More Pennies, includes a tribute to the lowly copper currency (well, copper-plated anyway), which is gradually going out of circulation after production ended last May.

No problem there, but the Royal Canadian Mint is demanding Gunning pay for the right to use a picture of the penny on the album cover. It's a copyright thing, apparently.

The mint wants to charge Gunning $1,200 for every 2,000 copies of the album he produces, which seems a bit steep to me, given that Gunning is not exactly Justin Bieber.

"The Mint has an Intellectual Property Policy in place to protect its IP (intellectual property) assets, which includes coin images, and ensure their appropriate use," the mint told CBC News in a statement.

"In instances where an approved use is being made for commercial gain (as would be the case with an ad campaign or selling music CDs), royalty fees are

Scientists suggest that more planets could harbour alien life deep underneath ground, well away from the traditional 'habitable zone'.For a planet to support life, it has been traditionally thought that it must orbit its parent star at a distance where the temperature is right so that liquid water can exist on the planet's surface, like Earth does. This is called the star's 'habitable zone'. This idea has already been challenged in the past by suggestions that moons orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune - which are far outside the Sun's habitable zone - may harbor life, and the Sun's habitable zone has even been conservatively expanded to include the orbit of Mars.

A new study by researchers at the University of Aberdeen suggests that more planets may support life than we previously thought.

"There is a significant habitat for microorganisms below the surface of the Earth, extending down several kilometres. And some workers believe that the bulk of life on Earth could even reside in this deep biosphere." said Professor John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen, while addressing an audience at last week's British

The devil is in the details.

A sealed room in the basement of an abandoned Pickering, Ontario farmhouse. A reinforced door locked with a tire iron. Chains hanging from the ceiling. A row of water jugs lined up along the floor.

This was the dungeon built for Gwen Armstrong.

As the Toronto Sun reports, Armstrong had helped her close friend Patricia Gallagher escape from an "abusive relationship" with Robert Edwin White.

In retaliation, White admitted to constructing this sinister subterranean chamber in order to punish her. The farmhouse was deliberately set ablaze in January.

The revelation was news to everyone, especially the intended victim. The Toronto Star notes that she told an Oshawa courtroom on Monday the discovery has left her traumatized.

"I am still in shock," she said in her victim impact statement. "Since (last Wednesday), those same photos have been running through my mind constantly."

"Throughout the day they distract me and when I close my eyes at night, they keep me

Students of the Universidade do Amazonas measure a pale-throated sloth, a species of three-toed sloth that inhabits tropical rainforests in northern South America.The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Zoological Society of London and the Species Survival Commission have released a report naming the 100 most endangered species on the planet. According to the report, scientists and conservationists fear these species will die out because humans don't get any obvious benefits from them.

"The future existence of the 100 species in this book lies squarely in our hands. Do theses species have a right to exist, or do we have the right to drive them to extinction?" wrote Professor Jonathan Baillie, Director of Conservation at the Zoological Society of London, and one of the authors of the report.

The report, titled Priceless or Worthless: The world's most threatened species, provides a graphical list of all 100 species, from 48 different countries, that are identified as the ones that are next in line for extinction if no efforts are made to preserve them. According to Braillie, the report goes into specific detail about 25 species,