Detectives are asking for the public’s help as they investigate who shot a bear hunter with a high caliber gun in the Washington Blue Mountains near Walla Walla. Walla Walla County detectives were called out to help the hunter in Nightingale Canyon about five miles east of Walla Walla and 50 miles from the Tri-Cities about 8:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 5, according to the sheriff’s office. The hunter had shot a bear, and his hunting partner stayed in place and watched as he went across the canyon to find the animal — a common hunting practice. As the hunting partner waited, a rifle shot rang out from the canyon and he saw the hunter fall to the ground and roll downhill. He found the hunter with a bullet wound that was bleeding profusely and saw a person running north through a farm field, deputies were told…
Mortality events in migratory birds have been occurring throughout the Mississippi Flyway since the detection of bird flu in South Carolina in mid-January. Locally, small groups of ducks, geese and swans were subsequently found dead in Pool 13 of the Upper Mississippi River during the spring migration. This pool is an important stopover area for many migratory bird species including bald eagles and hawks that also were found dead. Currently, there is an extensive die-off of American white pelicans and double-crested cormorants.
Bird flu is scientifically referred to as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). This highly contagious virus is a major reservoir for influenza A viruses which can infect poultry, dogs, cats, pigs, fox and humans. Wild waterfowl seldom display clinical signs when infected making them a good source for virus transmission.
A Nebraska mother and her teenage daughter are facing criminal charges following the teen’s abortion in April in a case where police obtained their Facebook messages about the abortion through a search warrant, according to published reports.
The Lincoln Journal Star reported that then 17-year-old Celeste Burgess and her mother, 41-year-old Jessica Burgess, were charged in early June after Jessica Burgess allegedly helped her daughter abort, burn and bury her fetus. Celeste is being tried as an adult in the case.
The Norfolk Police Department originally charged both with removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body — a felony — concealing the death of another person, and false reporting. Police got a tip claiming Celeste had miscarried and secretly buried the fetus with her mother’s help, the report said. Investigators were able to obtain her medical records indicating she was 23 weeks pregnant at the time. Nebraska prohibits abortion after 20 weeks.
The Journal Star cited court records as saying when police originally interviewed them, Celeste Burgess said had unexpectedly given birth to her stillborn baby in the shower. She woke her mother, and they put the baby’s body in a bag and later drove a few miles out of town and buried the body with the help of another man, who has already pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, the report said.
Police then served Facebook with a search warrant to access direct messages between the mother and daughter allegedly detailing how Jessica Burgess had obtained abortion pills for her daughter and gave her instructions on how to take them, the Journal Star said. Top VideosFormer 49er Frank Gore arrested in New Jersey after adomestic violence dispute
In July, about a month after the original charges, Jessica Burgess was also charged with two more felonies: performing or attempting an abortion on a pregnancy at more than 20 weeks, and performing an abortion as a non-licensed doctor.
Both Jessica Burgess and Celeste Burgess pleaded not guilty to all charges last week.
In an emailed statement to KPIX 5, Facebook said,
“Nothing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion.
“Both of these warrants were originally accompanied by non-disclosure orders, which prevented us from sharing any information about them. The orders have now been lifted.”
Forbes reported the case is one of the first instances of a person’s Facebook activity being used to incriminate her in a state where abortion is restricted, following June’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Soon after June’s Supreme Court decision stripping away constitutional protections for abortions, Facebook and Instagram began immediately removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them. The overturning of Roe v. Wade generated a flood of mentions across social media of abortion pills, as well as posts mentioning specific versions such as mifepristone and misoprostol, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
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Aug. 10, 2022, 7:50 AM PDT
By Rhoda Kwan
TAIPEI, Taiwan — China appeared to be rehearsing an invasion just miles away. World leaders issued forceful condemnations. But as Beijing’s military sent missiles and jets over their heads in a display of fury, many residents of Taiwan remained unmoved by what outside observers fear is a rising threat of war.
“We grew up with this,” said Rui Hao, a 40-year-old resident of Taipei, the capital, shrugging off the potential for conflict.
When he was a boy, his parents considered emigrating from their home in Taiwan to escape the threat of war with China. Three decades later, they still live here.
“I don’t think China will attack because our rockets can also reach Beijing and Shanghai,” Rui said. “There will be mutual destruction. We’re just a small island, but they are the ones who have much more to lose.”
Rui, who now has a child of his own, said he rarely discusses the possibility of a Chinese invasion with his friends and family.
People visit the harbor where Taiwanese navy warships are anchored in Keelung, Taiwan.Annabelle Chih / Getty Images
It has been a major point of discussion around the world, however, as the live-fire military exercises China launched in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit raise fears it is looking to change the long-established status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese officials say it is the United States that is trying to change the status quo by strengthening its unofficial relations with Taiwan, a self-ruling island that Beijing claims as its territory.
“Faced with this, China has no choice but to fight back and defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday.
But either way this latest crisis has sharpened global concerns about the future of the island, a longtime flashpoint in U.S.-China relations and a flourishing democracy in a region where autocracy has been making steady gains.
‘We only want to protect our way of life’
Lee Ming-che was among the human rights activists who met with Pelosi last week, during the brief visit in which she reiterated Washington’s support for Taiwan.
Lee spent five years in a Chinese prison as a political prisoner. Now, only four months after his release and return to Taiwan, Chinese threats to the freedoms he can again enjoy at home are escalating.
From left, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Lee Ming-che and Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu, in Taiwan last week. Courtesy Lee Ming Che
“I saw and personally experienced in prison how the Chinese government disregards human rights and the law. And now this kind of country wants to encroach on Taiwan’s democracy and human rights,” Lee told NBC News by phone on Tuesday.
“Because Taiwan’s previous generations have dedicated a lot of effort for Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and human rights, we only want to protect our way of life, to live in our own country, but China uses its military might to threaten Taiwan.”
Beijing’s military exercises around the island have gone further than in the past and than many experts had expected. On Wednesday, a spokesman for China’s Eastern Theater Command said the military had “successfully completed” various tasks around the island but would “carry out military training and preparedness continuously.”
“It is possible we will see the staging of additional military exercises, at intervals, over the coming months,” said Amanda Hsiao, senior analyst for China at the International Crisis Group, who is based in Taipei.
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But for generations of people in Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled in 1949 after losing to Mao Zedong’s Communist forces in China’s civil war, these security concerns are nothing new. Co-existing with Beijing’s threats is simply part of life, which has carried on across Taiwan this summer as usual.
On Dongyin, a Taiwanese island just 31 miles off the coast of China, an electronic dance music rave with clouds of foam, fog and jets from water cannons kicked off on Saturday evening even as China’s military drills were unfolding in the surrounding skies and waters.
This measured approach flies in the face of some rhetoric abroad comparing Taiwan to Ukraine, where many residents reacted with disbelief to Russia’s long-signaled invasion in February. U.S. military experts and former defense officials have warned China’s army is now much more advanced than the last time cross-Strait tensions soared in 1996, leading some to ask whether Taiwan is being too complacent.
“There’s a lot of what feels like judgment from experts in the U.S. looking at Taiwan’s calm reaction and saying people in Taiwan need to take this more seriously, they don’t fully appreciate the circumstance they’re in,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist and associate professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “To which I think a lot of the Taiwanese response is, ‘We fully appreciate the circumstance we’re in, we’re just choosing to react to it in a more calm way than you are.’”
Air raid drills are held regularly in Taiwan, and officials are revising a civil defense handbook that was issued earlier this year. But the island also says it needs continued support from the international community.
“This has repercussions for the entire region, which we are all witnessing real-time,” said Enoch Wu, the founder of Forward Alliance, a nonprofit group that holds public workshops to prepare Taiwanese for conflict and crises. “This is why it is in the common interest of democratic partners to enhance defense alliances now, as the only means of preserving peace and ensuring stability.”
Life in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, continued as normal last week despite live-fire drills by the Chinese military. Lam Yik Fie / Bloomberg via Getty Images
‘Resilience and confidence’
Asked whether he was worried about China’s actions, President Joe Biden told reporters Monday: “I’m not worried, but I’m concerned that they’re moving as much as they are. But I don’t think they’re going to do anything more.” A Defense Department official said the U.S. had not changed its assessment that China would not try to invade Taiwan in the next two years.
“We’re not naïve — we don’t necessarily think that the U.S. will come help us if China did invade,” said Sophia Hsieh, a 44-year-old English tutor based in the city of Taoyuan. “We just all tacitly know that if they do attack, we won’t let them benefit from it.”
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu pointed to that resolve in comments on Tuesday.
“Taiwan’s people, society, military and government have displayed resilience and confidence, and remained calm,” he said at a news conference. “China’s continued attempts to intimidate Taiwan will not panic us, nor will they defeat us.”
He accused Beijing on Tuesday of rehearsing for an eventual invasion, while Taiwan started its own live-fire drill that it said had already been planned and was not a response to the Chinese exercises.
On Wednesday, the Chinese government released a white paper on the “Taiwan question,” its first since 2000, that reiterated its desire for “peaceful reunification.” But it did not rule out the use of force as a “last resort taken under compelling circumstances,” without specifying what those circumstances might be.
The majority of Taiwan’s almost 24 million people say they have no desire to become a part of China, preferring to maintain the status quo whereby the island runs independently but does not make any official claims of independence. In an opinion poll published this week by Taiwan’s Chinese Association of Public Opinion Research, 60 percent of respondents said they were either not that worried or not worried at all about a war between Taiwan and China.
Beijing’s aggression may end up backfiring, alienating even elements in Taiwan that have long supported “reunification” with China while leaving the broader public more skeptical than ever.
“How can you expect reunification if even before you come you’re already threatening us like this?” said Li Ao, a Taipei taxi driver in his 30s who used to travel frequently to the Chinese mainland. “Most people will be antagonized by this.”
And what hairy beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards a laboratory to be born?
Some 3,900 years ago, on mainland Siberia, the last known woolly mammoth breathed its last. Since then, humans have known mammoths only through their remnants: scattered bones and a small number of frozen carcasses, complete with the tatty remnants of once-shaggy fur. These remains have, for centuries, provoked our curiosity – curiosity that might one day be sated. Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based start-up, is using genetic engineering in its quest to bring the species back to life.
“The woolly mammoth was the custodian of a healthier planet,” the company says. Using salvaged mammoth DNA, Colossal will genetically edit Asian elephants, the species’ closest extant cousin. If its plans are successful, then it will produce a woolly mammoth – or as close as possible a replica – six years from now. This year, the company has raised $75m from investors.
Thus, about 3,906 years after it thought it had seen the back of us, the woolly mammoth might be reacquainted with humans – a species that has never seen a large mammal that it didn’t like the idea of eating. Their extinction wasn’t solely our responsibility – the end of the ice age massively reduced the size of their potential habitat – but, as some palaeontologists argue, pre-history is littered with the bodies of megafauna we’ve eaten to extinction. Giant sloths, giant armadillos, dire wolves… whoever was presenting Planet Earth in those days would have had to stay on their toes.
Given the apparent progress in the field of reconstituting the mammoth, we might as well answer the obvious question: should we eat them? Colossal has made no mention of this prospect, focusing instead on the environmental benefits of mammoth restoration: the animal’s heavy gait thickens permafrost, or the permanently frozen layer of soil, gravel and sand under the Earth’s surface, preventing it from melting and releasing greenhouse gases. “If the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem could be revived,” the company argues, “it could help in reversing the rapid warming of the climate and more pressingly, protect the Arctic’s permafrost – one of the world’s largest carbon reservoirs.”
Still, one wonders whether people will be tempted to have a taste, just as their ancestors did. We will have to decide at some point whether we, too, want to eat woolly mammoth – and indeed any other species we choose to resurrect. Would you eat them?
Holly Whitelaw, director of Regenerative Food and Farming, says she’d be up for it. “I would eat anything that was holistically grazed,” says Whitelaw. Roaming animals, she says, are healthy for soil; they distribute seeds and microbes as they wander. The healthier the Arctic soil, the more grassland it supports, and the more carbon is removed from the atmosphere. “It’s like bringing the wolves back,” Whitelaw says. “You get that whole tier of the system working better again.”
It would be a great tragedy if we were to heave these majestic individuals into our time just to use and exploit them for our own benefit
Victoria Herridge, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum and an expert on woolly mammoths, has called for caution. In carrying out this kind of environmental project, Dr Herridge told The Telegraph, “you are carrying out a bio-engineering experiment which, if your goal is [met], will create change at a global scale. It becomes a question of: who gets to tamper with the climate system of the planet?”
Speaking to The Independent, Dr Herridge expressed additional concerns about the provenance of these mammoths. “I have a problem with anything to do with surrogate mothers,” she says. The genetically modified mammoth amalgams will gestate within Asian elephants, risking them significant pain and medical risk.
These are objections to the project itself, rather than to the idea of eating mammoth meat at the end of it. Dr Herridge sees this scenario as unlikely, but poses a hypothetical scenario in which she would consider eating mammoth meat. “Fast-forward 100 years. Imagine that Siberia isn’t a bog, there’s a place for woolly elephants to roam, they’re not wading through mosquito-infested swamp. Let’s say they’ve managed to breed 20,000 woolly elephants at this point. They’ve wandered across to Banff and they’re causing havoc, and to maintain that population they had to have an annual cull. Would I turn it down? No. But there are so many caveats.”
Whitelaw says that pasture-raised mammoth would have a good ratio of omega:3 to omega:6 fats, making it a good dietary choice. With this in mind, it’s easy to imagine Paleo enthusiasts providing consumer demand. Dr Herridge, though, is again sceptical. “The idea that you can have a diet that harks back to this ancient way is really problematic,” she says. “There’s this naive idea that there’s a lost Eden. Our vision of it is based on nothing but wishful thinking and stereotypes.”
There are other ways of looking at this question. Thinkers such as Brian Tomasik, author of the blog Essays on Reducing Suffering, argue that if you’re going to eat animals, “it’s generally better to eat larger ones so that you get more meat per horrible life and painful death. For example, a beef cow yields over 100 times as much meat per animal as a chicken, so switching from eating all chicken to all beef would reduce the number of farmed animals killed by more than 99 per cent.”
Considering the question of eating woolly mammoths, Tomasik says: “A woolly mammoth would weigh roughly 10 times as much as a beef cow, so eating mammoths rather than smaller animals would reduce the number of animal deaths even more.”
We should also consider the manner of the mammoth’s death. “Whether death by hunting would be better or worse than a natural death in the wild,” Tomasik says, “depends on how long it would take for the mammoth to die after being shot, and how painful the gunshot wound was until the point of death.” Wild deer, he says, can take 30-60 minutes to die after being shot in the lungs or heart. Their brains are considered too small a target, though that could be different for mammoths.
There are many competing considerations here. Although the rejuvenation of Arctic grasslands would probably be good for the climate, it might also entail higher numbers of wild animals. Tomasik views this as bad news. “Almost all wild animals are invertebrates or small vertebrates that produce vast numbers of offspring, most of whom die painfully not long after being born.”
I think it’ll be a bit like pork
More trenchant opposition to the idea comes from Elisa Allen, PETA’s vice-president of programmes. Arguing that we ought to focus on protecting existing species, whose habitats are fast disappearing, rather than resurrect species whose habitats are already lost, Allen says: “If anything distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, it is the selfish desire to eat the other members of it when we don’t have to.” Allen says that “the future of the meat industry lies in lab-grown or 3D-printed meat”.
Jacy Reese Anthis, co-founder of the Sentience Institute, sees the application of this technology to woolly mammoths as ethically preferable to hunting them. “One of humanity’s most pressing challenges for the 21st century is to end the unethical, unsustainable industry of factory farming,” he says. “Cultured meat is one of the most promising substitutes, so if mammoth meat is what gets people excited about that, then I’m excited about it. It would be extremely wasteful to breed and farm live mammoths when we could sustainably grow meat tissue in bioreactors.”
This would avoid what Anthis sees as the inherent wrongness of killing, for our own pleasure, a creature that can think and feel. He is all for technology, he says, but stresses that it is important “to maintain boundaries of respect and bodily integrity for sentient beings. One of the most fruitful boundaries has been the right to not be owned and exploited for another’s benefit. This applies to humans but increasingly we recognise it for animals, and it is a crucial pillar in responsible stewardship of our fellow creatures.
“It would be a great tragedy if we were to reach our technological arm back into the Pleistocene and heave these majestic individuals into our time just to use and exploit them for our own benefit.”
For our ancestors, who made buildings out of the bones of mammoths, this issue wouldn’t have been half so hairy. But let’s imagine a mammoth-based dish derived not from hunting but from a bioreactor. How might it taste? Whitelaw has a guess. “I think it’ll be a bit like pork. You’ll have to cook it long and slow to render that fat down to make it. Or maybe you could make it nice and crispy.”
Mind out for that fur, though.
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China has released a major policy document outlining the strategic patience underpinning its objective of “reunification” with Taiwan. In it, Beijing holds open the door to peace, but warns it could be compelled to use force.
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Watch: Taiwan Begins Anti-Invasion Exercise As China Extends Military DrillsUnmute
“The Taiwan Question andChina‘s Reunification in the New Era,” the first Chinese government white paper on the topic in 22 years and the first under the leadership of PresidentXi Jinping, was published as a week of intense Chinese military drills around Taiwan appeared to ease on Wednesday.
The report repeats many of Beijing’s familiar talking points, including its argument that Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was responsible for raising…
Wildlife advocates are suing federal officials after they missed a deadline to decide if protections for wolves should be restored across the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains
FILE – This undated photo courtesy of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife shows a wolf of the Teanaway Pack fitted with a radio collar in the Teanaway area of Washington’s Central Cascades in Washington state. Wildlife advoc…Show moreThe Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. –Wildlife advocates sued federal officials Tuesday after the government missed a deadline to decide if protections for gray wolves should be restored across the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains, where Republican-led states have made it easier to kill the predators.
The Biden administration said in a preliminary finding last September that protections for wolves may need to be restored because increased hunting in Idaho and Montana posed a potential threat to wolves…
Monsoonal showers and thunderstorms continue across the Southwest, portions of California, the Great Basin and into the Intermountain West.
“As we pause the clock at 3 p.m. this afternoon, right like clockwork, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and even Utah seeing these afternoon and evening thunderstorms,” FOX Weather meteorologistBritta Merwinsaid. “As we get closer to 10 p.m., they kind of run themselves out, and we are nice and quiet throughout the overnight hours.”
Long-range forecasts show no end to the pattern anytime soon. Daytime heating and overabundant moisture will help trigger widespread scattered thunderstorms each day into next week, the FOX Forecast Center said.
Lowcountry deer hunters in South Carolina have an opportunity to harvest a male deer still in velvet when the season opens Aug. 15. Provided/Kenneth Cordray
The opening day for hunting white-tailed deer is only days away.
While many of South Carolina’s approximately 200,000 deer hunters will choose to bypass the Aug. 15 opener for private lands in the Lowcountry in anticipation of cooler fall weather, there are plenty of hunters anxious to cash in on an opportunity seldom found in other states.
That’s the opportunity to harvest a deer in “velvet.”
Every year, male deer shed their antlers in late winter and begin to grow new ones during the summer. During this growth period, the new antlers contain nerves and blood vessels and the hairy skin looks much like velvet.
New detections of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza tied to backyard poultry flock; marks the 10th Montana flock affected during this year’s wave of infectionsBY BEACON STAFFAUGUST 9, 2022
State livestock officials have confirmed detections of bird flu in a backyard poultry flock in Flathead County, providing the latest evidence that this year’s wave of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) continues to march across the United States.
On July 24, the Montana Department of Livestock (MDOL) announced a positive detection of HPAI at a Flathead County residence, marking the 10th HPAI affected Montana flock linked to this year’s wave of U.S. infections, which have been traced to seasonal migrations of wild birds. Nationally, nearly 400 poultry flocks have been diagnosed with HPAI this year.
“With over two months since our last case of HPAI in the state, we had hoped that avian influenza was…
