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Nei suoi tre decenni di lavoro con gli elefanti marini, la dottoressa Marcela Uhart non aveva mai visto nulla di simile sulla scena avvenuta lo scorso ottobre sulle spiagge della penisola argentina di Valdés.Era l'alta stagione riproduttiva; la spiaggia avrebbe dovuto pullulare di harem di femmine fertili e di maschi enormi in lotta tra loro per il dominio. Si trattava invece di “carcasse su carcasse su carcasse”, ha ricordato il dottor Uhart, che dirige il programma sanitario per la fauna selvatica dell’America Latina presso l’Università della California, a Davis.L'H5N1, uno dei tanti virus che causano l'influenza aviaria, aveva già ucciso almeno 24.000 leoni marini sudamericani lungo le coste del continente in meno di un anno. Ora era arrivato per gli elefanti marini.I cuc...

The Ukrainian lieutenant was in a firing position on the Eastern Front, commanding an artillery unit that relied on American-supplied M777 howitzers and other large guns, as U.S. lawmakers gathered in Washington to decide whether its guns would were forced to remain silent due to lack of ammunition. .But when the lieutenant returned to his base Saturday evening, he received word that he and millions of Ukrainians had been praying to be heard.“I had just entered the building after the shift change when the guys informed me that the aid package for Ukraine had finally been approved by Congress,” said the lieutenant, identified only by his first name, Oleksandr, in compliance with military protocol. . “We hope that this aid package will reach us as soon as possible.”The decision by America...

Wesselman-Pierce lived with her husband, Vince Pierce, and her two children. “I didn't want to lose our friendship, no matter what,” a tearful Wesselman-Pierce told Schulman in the film. “Many of the personalities that emerged were just fragments of myself.”At the end of the documentary, a brooding Pierce recalled a story he'd heard and, in turn, gave the film — and the expression — his name. Cod, he said, was once shipped in vats from Alaska to China, but the fish arrived soft and tasteless. Catfish were eventually added to the tanks to keep the cod healthy. “There are those people who are catfish in life,” he said. In his mind, his wife was one of them. “They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh.”Life, he added, would be "boring and monotonous if ...

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon when he was finally released in 1991 by Islamic militants after more than six years of captivity, died Saturday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, in Hudson Valley. . He was 76 years old.The cause was apparently complications from recent heart surgery, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.Mr. Anderson, Beirut bureau chief for the Associated Press, had just dropped off his tennis partner, an AP photographer, at his home after an early morning tennis match on March 16, 1985, when men armed with guns broke open the door. the door of his car and pushed him into a Mercedes-Benz. The same car had tried to cut him off the day before as he was returning to work from lunch in his seaside apartment.The...

In the age of Ozempic, “fat activist” Virginia Sole-Smith inspires and infuriates her followers.

The revelation that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned drug seven months before the Tokyo Olympics, but were secretly allowed to continue competing, has exposed a bitter and sometimes deeply personal rift within the sport, and has brought fresh criticism to the global authority that oversees drug testing.A New York Times investigation has uncovered previously unreported details of the 2021 episode, in which a contingent of Chinese swimmers, including nearly half the team China sent to the Tokyo Games, tested positive for a drug for the heart prohibited by prescription that can help athletes increase endurance. and reduce recovery times.Within hours, the disclosure of an incident that had remained secret for more than three years had sparked strong reactions from athletes, co...

Doctorow noted that just as the Internet has made routine tasks less burdensome, it has also made scams much easier to pull off. Imagine an old-fashioned boiler room where fast-talking scammers make hundreds of phone calls in an attempt to cheat strangers out of their savings, he said. Now fast forward to 2024, when scammers will be able to send millions of phishing messages and emails with the help of bots.“If you can automate some parts of it,” Doctorow said, “you can cast a much wider net.”SMS scams netted Americans $300 million in 2022, the Federal Trade Commission reported. In the same year, Americans received 225 billion spam messages, a 157% increase from the previous year, according to a report from Robokiller, a company that sells a spam-blocking app.While digitally savvy and c...

In the early hours of Friday, Mehrdad, an engineer in Isfahan, Iran, awoke to the sound of explosions rattling windows and shaking the ground. In Tehran, passengers about to board flights were suddenly told that the airspace was closed. Israel, they soon discovered, had attacked Iran.As explosions and gunfire rang out in the distance, Mehrdad, 43, realized that the Israelis' target was a military base on the outskirts of the city. He and his pregnant wife were still afraid of war breaking out, he said in a telephone interview.“I think Israel wanted to test the waters and evaluate with last night's attacks,” said Mehrdad, who, like others interviewed for this article, asked that his last name be withheld for fear of retaliation. “I fear the worst is coming, but I also hope things...

In the month following the announcement of an outbreak of avian influenza on dairy farms, federal authorities have repeatedly reassured the public that the surge in infections has no impact on the nation's food or milk supply and involves few risks for the population.Yet the outbreak among cows may be more serious than initially thought. In an obscure online update this week, the Department of Agriculture said there is now evidence that the virus is spreading among cows and from cows to poultry.North Carolina officials have detected avian flu infections in a herd of cattle without symptoms, the New York Times has learned — information the USDA has not shared publicly. The finding suggests that infections may be more widespread than previously thought.It's unclear whether there ar...

Its towering chimneys once emitted clouds of steam. In the gigantic engine rooms, turbines turned 24 hours a day. Furnaces burned trainloads of coal.In Soviet times, the Kurakhove heat and power plant gave rise to the surrounding city in eastern Ukraine, driving the local economy and supporting the community with wages and heating for homes.“Our plant is the heart of our city,” said Halyna Liubchenko, a retiree whose husband worked his entire career in the nearby coal mines that powered the plant.That heart now barely beats, partly destroyed by artillery. The plant is among the last still operational in Ukraine's Donbass region, once the center of the country's heavy industry and now the focal point of Russian ground offensives that are devastating towns and cities along the fron...