The Crozet islands is located halfway between the southern tip of Africa and Antarctica. One of the islands in the archipelago, named Île aux Cochons, is home to the largest colony of king penguins on earth. The king penguin is the second largest penguin species on earth after the emperor penguin. The last time scientists counted the population there was an estimated population of 2,000,000 of the 3 foot tall highly specialized birds. Reviewing satellite images and other photographic evidence, Antarctic scientists report that the colony has collapsed to a population of only 200,000. This is significant because the Île aux Cochons represents one third of the earth’s King Penguin population. These birds do not make a nest on the treeless island, instead they “lay one egg at a time and carry it around on their feet covered with a flap of abdominal skin, called a brood patch”.
The University of Vienna describes the conditions on which this particular penguin requires for survival. Hint, they are not flexible.
King penguins are in fact picky animals: in order to form a colony where they can mate, lay eggs and rear chicks over a year, they need tolerable temperature all year round, no winter sea ice around the island, and smooth beach of sand or pebbles. But, above all, they need an abundant and reliable source of food close by to feed their chicks. For millennia, this seabird has relied on the Antarctic Polar Front, an upwelling front in the Southern Ocean concentrating enormous amounts of fish on a relatively small area. Yet, due to climate change, this area is drifting south, away from the islands where most King penguins currently live. Parents are then forced to swim farther to find food, while their progeny is waiting, fasting longer and longer on the shore. This study predicts that, for most colonies, the length of the parents’ trips to get food will soon exceed the resistance to starvation of their offspring, leading to massive King penguin crashes in population size, or, hopefully, relocation.
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A huge colony of king penguins on the Île aux Cochons in 1982
The owners and operators of a duck boat that sank in Missouri, killing 17 people, put passengers’ lives at risk by going out to water when severe thunderstorms were predicted, lawyers involved in a $100 million federal lawsuit argued Monday.
“For 20 years, we have known that duck boats are death traps. It was proven yet again in devastating fashion in Branson, Missouri,” attorney Robert Mongeluzzi said during a news conference Monday morning.
“It is clear that they knew severe weather was coming and they tried to beat the storm by going on water first rather than refunding the 40 bucks that each of these people paid putting their lives at risk,” he said, later adding. “This was not in any way a storm that came out of nowhere.”
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The duck boat that sank is lifted out of Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri, on July 23, 2018.Lora Ratliff / U.S. Coast Guard
Two years, or roughly a million news cycles ago, give or take. The FBI’s original Trump-Russia investigation got underway in the summer before the 2016 campaign, though the public wasn’t really aware of it then. (In contrast to the extremely public FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the bureau followed protocol and never publicly acknowledged that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was under investigation for its ties to a hostile foreign government.)
The little reporting on the probe at the time underplayed the gravity of the investigation. Not long before the election, The New York Times said in a piece titled “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” that investigators had not “found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.”
It wasn’t until long after Trump’s election that then-FBI Director James Comey in March 2017 publicly confirmed the bureau’s investigation of connections between Trump associates and the Russian government. The Times later admitted that its pre-election story “gave an air of finality to an investigation that was just beginning” and buried the key fact of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, center, is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s been alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to tip the scales toward a Donald Trump victory.
Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney, said Donald Trump knew in advance about a meeting during the 2016 campaign in which Russians were expected to offer negative information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to a report by CNN.
Citing sources with knowledge of Cohen’s claims, CNN said the attorney is willing to share that information with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. The sources said Cohen does not have any evidence, including tapes, to back up his claims.
NBC News also reported that Cohen was willing to speak to Meuller about his claims, citing its own “knowledgeable source” on Thursday night.
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Drew Angerer via Getty Images – Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, said that Trump knew about the June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer before it took place.
Everybody knows Yelp can help you find a great restaurant for dinner. Now, it can also tell you its health score (but do you really want to know?!). Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door.
Los Angeles police arrested a man outside a Trader Joe’s on Saturday evening, bringing an apparent end to an incident in which a man barricaded himself inside the grocery store for hours after running from police.
A woman inside the store was killed, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Saturday at a news conference. The suspect was wounded in his left arm after exchanging shots with police, Garcetti told reporters.
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The LA Fire Department said six people ranging from ages 12 to 81 were taken to the hospital following the incident. All were in fair condition with no life-threatening injuries, a spokeswoman said.
Two months before the 2016 election, longtime Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen secretly taped a conversation with the then-GOP presidential nominee about whether to purchase the rights to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal’s account of her alleged extramarital affair with Trump, according to three people familiar with the conversation.
The recording, which Cohen made surreptitiously in Trump Tower in early September 2016, was seized by federal agents who are investigating Cohen for potential bank and election-law crimes, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.
Trump and Cohen’s discussion came a month after AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, bought the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000, then shelved it.
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Here’s a breakdown of the people that President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen has dealt with and the investigations he’s entangled in.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
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James B. Comey, James R. Clapper Jr. and John O. Brennan at a Senate hearing on Russia’s election interference in January 2017.CreditAl Drago/The New York Times
For four years, a Russian accused of being a covert agent pursued a brazen effort to infiltrate conservative circles and influence powerful Republicans while she secretly was in contact with Russian intelligence operatives, a senior Russian official and a billionaire oligarch close to the Kremlin whom she called her “funder,” federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The woman, Maria Butina, carried out her campaign through a series of deceptions that began in 2014, if not earlier, prosecutors said. She lied to obtain a student visa to pursue graduate work at American University in 2016. Apparently hoping for a work visa that would grant her a longer stay, she offered one American sex in exchange for a job. She moved in with a Republican political operative nearly twice her age, describing him as her boyfriend. But she privately expressed “disdain” for him and had him do her homework, prosecutors said.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Explore the dynamic relationship between faith and science, where curiosity meets belief. Join us in fostering dialogue, inspiring discovery, and celebrating the profound connections that enrich our understanding of existence.
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James' World 2 