Poland is investigating the deaths of dozens of cats and some of them have been linked to H5N1 bird flu, veterinarians reported on Friday. If confirmed, it would be the first time that avian influenza has affected cats in large numbers.
Concerns were raised on Sunday when a veterinarian in western Poland reported the death of a cat which suffered from neurological and respiratory symptoms. Since then, dozens of suspected cases have been reported in different parts of the country.
The General Veterinary Inspectorate confirmed on Friday that a number of samples from the Tri-City region in northern Poland had tested positive for “influenza.” The statement did not specify the exact type of influenza.
Kasia Domanska-Blicharz, of the National Veterinary Research Institute, told local media that some of the samples had tested positive…
The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana andMexicowas made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.
A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern USover the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.
More than 40 million people in the US, including those living in the Texas cities of Houston, San Antonio and Austin, have been placed under excessive heat warnings, raising fears over…
If humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later? – Essie, age 11, Michigan
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if everyone suddenly disappeared?
What would happen to all our stuff? What would happen to our houses, our schools, our neighborhoods, our cities? Who would feed the dog? Who would cut the grass? Although it’s a common theme in movies, TV shows and books, the end of humanity is still a strange thing to think…
Warnings and advisories for excessive heat are also in place across the Southwest and parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Punishing heat is gripping Texas for a third straight week, with tens of millions of people in other states across the South also facing scorching conditions this week. It’s a brutal heat wave that officials say “shows no signs of letting up.”
Much of Texas continues toswelter under triple-digit temperatures, and heat records across the state have been smashed in what has been a blistering start to summer. Warnings and advisories for excessive heat are also in place across the Southwest and parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama…
In 1989 Gallup reported that 76 percent of Americans considered themselves environmentalists, by 2021 that had declined to 41 percent.
At the same time, poll after poll shows that about 70 percent favor public policies that control air, water and toxic waste pollution. What has happened is that the image of environmentalism and environmental advocacy itself has become entwined in the political polarization that has infected all aspects of American political life.
When the environmental movement became a mass phenomenon in the late 1960’s and 1970’s it was seen as a safe, consensus issue that contrasted with the bitter politics of the War in Vietnam. Americans might not understand the “domino theory” of contagious communism, but they could see smog and knew that a river should never catch fire. Protecting the planet was as American as apple pie.
The decline in the image of environmentalism took place for two reasons: the anti-regulatory ideology accelerated by the Reagan Administration, and the issue of climate change.
President Ronald Reagan was perhaps a moderate by today’s Republican standards, but he saw government and regulation as the source of America’s problems. People saw factories close down and thought it was due to environmental regulation.
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While occasionally that happened, most deindustrialization was due to technological changes (such as containerized shipping, which made transporting goods cheaper) and lower-cost foreign labor. That was coupled with a transition from a manufacturing economy to a brain-based service economy. Today, in New York City, we no longer manufacture clothing — we design and market it, making far more money than we ever did when we made over 90 percent of America’s clothes.
But anti-government ideology led to the idea that regulation “killed jobs.” Actually, the opposite is true. Environmental rules inspired innovation in the auto industry and created a more efficient, high-tech, safer motor vehicle. But still, the right-wing mindset is that regulation stifled private sector initiative, and those socialist environmentalists were always pushing rules and telling people what to do.
Coupled with anti-regulatory ideology, environmentalists walked right into the culture wars by shaming users of SUVs, and condemning people that eat meat or wear fur. Ironically, the original environmentalists like Teddy Roosevelt were hunters and anglers advocating conservation so they could fish and hunt. To this day, America’s largest environmental group is the National Wildlife Federation, primarily comprised of people who hunt and fish.
Vegan urban environmentalists focused on climate change and living parsimoniously made no effort to understand the mobility needs of large suburban families with kids’ sports equipment to move around town, nor of rural folks who hunted and froze meat to get through the winter. Instead of seeking common ground from a shared love of nature, some highly visible environmentalists took the sanctimonious high ground of moral superiority.
Finally, there was the climate issue itself. Unlike air and water pollution, which were often created locally and could be seen and smelled by the senses, climate change was created globally. Moreover, its pollution was an invisible gas and its impact largely predictive rather than present.
Interestingly, young people may bring environmentalism back to the mainstream. Polling data indicates that they are more concerned about climate change and environmental degradation than their elders.
The Biden Administration’s landmark environmental law, the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act, is actually in synch with the ideas of these young Republicans. Its subsidies and tax advantages are designed to stimulate private investment in the green economy. Judging by the billions of dollars already invested in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, early signs indicate that this strategy is working.
It may require some re-branding, but the consensus around environmental protection may yet re-emerge in American political life.
(Corrects paragraph 2 to say “2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022”, not “2016, 2019, 2022 and 2022”)
By Gloria Dickie
-Wildfires burning through large swathes of eastern and western Canada have released a record 160 million tonnes of carbon, the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service said on Tuesday.
This year’s wildfire season is the worst on record in Canada, with some 76,000 square kilometres (29,000 square miles) burning across eastern and western Canada. That’s greater than the combined area burned in 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
As of June 26, the annual emissions from the fires are now the largest for Canada since satellite monitoring began in 2003, surpassing 2014 at 140 million…
Vladimir Putin has been left with a “poorly trained” military after the Wagner Group moved to Belarus – with fears now rising of a “last resort” nuclear attack.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary group’s boss, and his fighters have gone to the bordering country after a 24-hour mutiny against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
And while Putin has dropped charges against Prigozhin and his forces, the Wagner Group, who have played a key role in Moscow’s war in Ukraine, are now away from the frontlines.
John Bryson, Professor of Enterprise and Economic Geography at The University of Birmingham, has now told Daily Express US that “it would seem that the Wagner Group is now history”.
Prof. John Bryson told Daily Express US ‘it would seem that the Wagner…
To our early relatives, cannibalism may not have been such a no-go area.
New evidence, found in an old museum collection, suggests hominims were butchering and eating each other at least 1.45million years ago.
US Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner was re-examining the fossilised shin bone of a relative of Homo sapiens – humans – when she noticed a number of small, clean cut marks.
Suspecting these looked very much like the telltale signs of a stone tool chopping away, Ms Pobiner made a mould of the surface and sent them to Colorado State University associate professor Michael Pante.
With no knowledge of where the marks came from, Professor Pante analsyed a 3D scan against 898 individual tooth, butchery and trample marks created during controlled experiments.
The result?
Nine of the 11 marks matched the type of damage inflicted by stone tools.
‘The information we have tells us that hominins were likely eating other hominins at least 1.45million years ago,’ said Pobiner. ‘There are numerous other examples of species from the human evolutionary tree consuming each other for nutrition, but this fossil suggests that our species’ relatives were eating each other to survive further into the past than we recognised.’
While the cut marks only indicate an ancient human cut the leg, and cannot determine what happened next, they are located where the calf muscle is attached to the bone via tendons – in other words, exactly where someone might cut if hoping to strip off the flesh.
The consistent orientation of the marks also suggests a repeated, deliberate effort to cut through the tissue.
‘These cut marks look very similar to what I’ve seen on animal fossils that were being processed for consumption,’ said Pobiner. ‘It seems most likely that the meat from this leg was eaten and that it was eaten for nutrition as opposed to for a ritual.’
However, even if the end result was intended for eating, the team can’t be sure this was cannibalism in action because neither the species of the individual being eaten nor the species doing the eating are known. The definition of cannibalism is the consuming of a member of the same species.
When originally discovered in modern-day Kenya, the shin bone fossil was identified as Australopithecus boisei, a small early hominim from east Africa living between 1.2 and 2.3million years ago. They were nicknamed ‘Nutcracker Man’ for their big teeth and strong jaw muscles.
In 1990 the fossil was reclassified as Homo erectus – the first of our ancestors to have human-like looks and body proportions, and the first to migrate out of Africa – but more recently it has been agreed that there isn’t enough information to classify it.
If in fact it was one early human species eating another, that is instead termed anthropophagy.
It is also unknown exactly how the individual died. Of the 11 marks on the bone, the two not identified as stone tool cuts are thought to have been inflicted by a species of big cat, of which there were several roaming the continent at the time. A lion is the best match, but there were also three different saber-tooth cats alive at the same time.
That suggests either the individual was mauled by a big cat who was scared off by other hominims before it could eat, or the remains of the individual were left out and scavenged.
Either way, it was a grisly end for this early relative.
Ontario County Humane Society / Happy Tails Animal Shelter logo
GENEVA, N.Y. — The Ontario County Humane Society says a Geneva resident trapped a raccoon, set the animal on fire while still alive, and posted it on social media.
Willis Bowles J., 35, is charged with animal cruelty and received an appearance ticket for Geneva City Court. The Humane Society began investigating on June 20 after getting a report of the social media post. The post shows a man pouring flammable liquid of the raccoon inside the trap and lighting a piece of paper.
The Humane Society later identified the suspect as Bowles and found the dead raccoon along with other evidence supporting the post after executing a search warrant.
The Ontario County Sheriff’s Office and Geneva Police Department helped with the…
PublishedJune 25, 2023
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