IT'S A CHUPACABRA

Wily 'coyote' -- or maybe dog -- on lam after clawing out of Mt. Pleasant Township shelter

Renatta Signorini, Tribune-Review, Greensburg, Pa.
Thu, January 27, 2022, 12:04 PM·2 min read

Jan. 27—An animal that was undergoing testing to determine if it is a dog or coyote escaped from the Mt. Pleasant Township wildlife rehabilitation center where it was being treated for mange.

Rescuers were searching for the creature Thursday, said wildlife rehabilitator Morgan Barron. Wildlife Works founder, director and senior rehabilitator Beth Shoaf discouraged anyone searching for the animal or trying to capture it.

"If they come across it, they should contact our office so we can have properly trained staff attempt to rescue and capture," Barron said. "They should not try to catch it themselves for the safety of them and the animal."

Barron operates the satellite location for Youngwood-based Wildlife Works. The nonprofit can be reached at 724-925-6862.

Barron found a destroyed empty cage and scratches on the walls Thursday morning when she went to check on the animal. It apparently chewed on a rubber seal around the window until it was able to push it open and tear through the screen.

"This was a concerted effort, the animal really wanted to get out of there," Shoaf said, adding that the organization's volunteers are devastated over the escape.

"We're sick. We're sick because so many people were invested in his well being, besides us," she said. "And then now he's out there again."

Rescuers encouraged residents to check their trail cameras and keep eye out near their homes.

The four-legged, 37-pound animal was being treated for mange after a Fairfield woman spotted it Jan. 17 outside her home. Rescuers weren't sure if it was a dog or coyote so TJ's Rescue Hideaway transported it to Barron, who was caring for it around the clock but limiting human exposure.

"Having been with us for a week, I think he started feeling better and actually doing what he did makes me really, really think it's a coyote as opposed to something else," Shoaf said.

Barron reported Tuesday that the animal was becoming more defensive as medicine kicked in. She said Thursday that its demeanor hadn't changed much.

"Still just laid there and tracked me with his eyes," Barron said.

DNA results are expected in the next couple weeks. Barron intended to release the animal back into the wild if it is a coyote. TJ's Rescue Hideaway was going to regain control if it is a dog.

The creature could return — Barron set up traps and it could seek out help on its own again. The mange condition will continue because the treatment did not last long enough.

Shoaf said she appreciates all of the support and donations the creature has brought to her organization, which rescues songbirds, raptors, raccoons, fawns, small mammals, waterfowl, reptiles and other wildlife. For details on how to donate, visit wildlifeworksinc.org.

Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Astronomers discovered a 'spooky' spinning object in our galactic backyard, emitting some of the strongest radio beams in the sky


Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Wed, January 26, 2022

An artist’s impression of what the object might look like if it’s a magnetar, with powerful magnetic fields.ICRAR

Astronomers found a spinning object emitting ultra-powerful radio waves in our "galactic backyard."


It's the latest in a series of mysterious radio signals that may point to new types of dead stars.


Astronomers are looking for more of these signals — and hoping ones they've discovered will reappear.

A spinning object in our neighborhood of the galaxy is beaming powerful radio waves at Earth — and astronomers don't know what it is.

The object is smaller than the sun and it must be spinning, because it only appears as an ultra-powerful radio signal for about one minute every 20 minutes, according to the Australian researchers studying it. The signal appeared and disappeared at this rhythm for several hours of telescope observations between January and March 2018. During its minute-long broadcasts, it was among the strongest radio signals in the sky.

"That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer, because there's nothing known in the sky that does that," Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, who discovered the object, said in a press release.

The Milky Way as viewed from Earth, with a star icon showing the position of the mysterious repeating transient.Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin)


They haven't detected it since.

Whatever the object is, it's only 4,000 light-years away, which is in our "galactic backyard," Hurley-Walker said. The researchers' best guess is that the mysterious object is the collapsed core of a dead star with an unusually powerful magnetic field.

Tyrone O'Doherty, a PhD student at Curtin University, first discovered the object in archival data that the Murchison Widefield Array telescope collected in 2018. The finding was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"It's exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object," O'Doherty said in the release.
A handful of 'transient' signals are baffling astronomers

An artist's impression of the mysterious radio signal coming from the center of the Milky Way.Sebastian Zentilomo/University of Sydney

When astronomers detect a signal that appears and disappears, they know they have a dead or dying star on their hands. They call these fleeting signals "transients."

Some transients appear suddenly and radiate radio waves for a few months before fading away. Those are usually supernovas — massive stars collapsing and ejecting their outer layers in a dramatic death. Other transients persist in the sky, flashing on and off in mere seconds, or even milliseconds. Those are pulsars — highly magnetized cores of long-dead massive stars, spinning rapidly and emitting beams of radiation from their poles.

But no types of transient known to astronomers will appear for a full minute every 20 minutes, then suddenly disappear from the record.

The Crab Nebula — a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion — as imaged by Hubble.NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)

This is the latest in a series of mysterious objects astronomers have discovered using low-frequency radio telescopes. Four other disappearing signals have come from unknown objects near the center of the Milky Way. They don't behave like any known transients and don't have much in common with each other, so astronomers have lumped them into a loose catchall category: "galactic center radio transients," or GCRTs.

In their paper, the Australian researchers write that their nearby spinning object resembles one of these GCRTs, which emitted a radio signal every 10 minutes.

Another group of mysterious transients, called "fast radio bursts," comes from other galaxies.

"Usually, when you find one object it suggests that there are probably many more out there in the universe. We just need to look for them," Manisha Caleb, a researcher studying fast radio bursts at the University of Sydney, told Insider in an email. "If anything, this discovery shows us that there are still many unknown unknowns out there in the universe."
There could be more mysterious objects like this one

A segment of the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia.Pete Wheeler, ICRAR

Hurley-Walker and her colleagues think their mystery object could be an "ultra-long period magnetar" — the dead core of a massive star, highly magnetized, spinning very slowly.

Scientists have never detected an ultra-long period magnetar before, but research leads them to believe they exist.

"Nobody expected to directly detect one like this, because we didn't expect them to be so bright," Hurley-Walker said, adding, "Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before."

The astronomers who discovered the 10-minute GCRT also speculated that their object could be the elusive long-period magnetar.

Astronomers studying fast radio bursts think those signals might also come from magnetars. Slower spinning could indicate ancient magnetars, explaining why some fast radio bursts come from clusters of stars that are far older than magnetars are known to be.

That makes this new object an exciting discovery, Kiyoshi Masui, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NBC News: "There's all this stuff that's just waiting to be found."

Hurley-Walker is monitoring the area where the object appeared, using the Murchison Widefield Array, the same telescope that first detected it. The mystery object has not shown up in telescope data since 2018, but Hurley-Walker hopes it will switch back on again. She's also scouring the archives for other objects like it.

"More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before," she said.

HIS BITCH LOOKS LIKE HIM
Gov tells Bette Midler to kiss dog's 'heinie' - and shows it



State of the State-West VirginiaWest Virginia Gov. Jim Justice holds up his dog Babydog's rear end as a message to people who've doubted the state as he comes to the end of his State of the State speech in the House chambers, Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, in Charleston, W.Va. (Chris Dorst/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)More

LEAH WILLINGHAM
Fri, January 28, 2022,

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Gov. Jim Justice has a message for singer and actress Bette Midler, who called West Virginians “poor, illiterate and strung out” in a tweet after Sen. Joe Manchin refused to support President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.

The 70-year-old Republican governor ended his televised State of the State address Thursday night by lifting up his English bulldog and flashing its rear end to the cameras and crowd.

“Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there: Kiss her heinie," Justice said, grinning as people applauded and some gave him a standing ovation.


Justice had spent more than an hour touting the state's accomplishments, including two recently announced economic development projects.

“Absolutely too many people doubted us," he said. "They never believed in West Virginia. ... They told every bad joke in the world about us.”

The crowd in the House of Delegates gallery included lawmakers, state Supreme Court justices, agency heads and members of the high school girl's basketball team Justice coaches, who were sitting in the gallery.

Not everyone was amused. In a tweet, West Virginia Democratic Del. Shawn Fluharty took the governor to task.

“The @WVGovernor brought his Babydog and pony show to the State of the State and pulled this stunt as some bold statement. It was nothing short of embarrassing and beneath the office,” he said. “Jim Justice habitually lowers the bar of our state. They don’t laugh with us, but at us.”

Manchin, a Democrat, effectively tanked his party’s signature $2 trillion domestic policy initiative that would have poured billions of dollars into child care, health care and other services.

“What #JoeManchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible,” Midler tweeted. “He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate and strung out.”

After receiving backlash, Midler apologized “to the good people of WVA” for her “outburst" in follow-up tweet later that day.

The Associated Press sent an email to Midler's publicist Friday requesting comment.

Some Kazakh protesters feel they were tricked into fuelling clan feud

FILE PHOTO: A view shows an artwork depicting Kazakhstan's First President Nazarbayev in Almaty

Olzhas Auyezov and Mariya Gordeyeva
Fri, January 28, 2022,
By Olzhas Auyezov and Mariya Gordeyeva

ALMATY (Reuters) - Some anti-government protesters in Kazakhstan, angry at a steep rise in car fuel prices, said their peaceful demonstrations this month were hijacked by mysterious masked men and that they feel they were tricked into fuelling a clan power struggle.

The protests erupted after a doubling in car fuel prices felt especially strongly in the west of the vast oil-rich Central Asian nation where most drivers use LPG rather than gasoline.

Discontent quickly escalated into the most serious unrest since Kazakhstan broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, with Russian-led peacekeepers drafted in to stabilise the situation.

The aftermath has seen President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev cement his authority, former president Nursultan Nazarbayev appear to lose influence and Nazarbayev's relatives squeezed out of power.

Gaziz Makhambetov, who took to the streets in the western town of Zhanaozen on Jan. 2, said he felt he had been used.

"Now I think that they did it (hike fuel prices) on purpose, to provoke the people," he told Reuters.

He said the protests, which swiftly prompted the authorities to cancel the price hike, look to have been engineered as part of what he and many other Kazakhs say looks like a power struggle between the Nazarbayev clan and the president's allies.

In Almaty, Kazakhstan's biggest city where protests turned violent, Alibek, a taxi driver, said he had taken part in a peaceful demonstration only to watch as highly organised armed men hijacked the event.

"They looked as if they were well-trained state security or military operatives. They moved around the square in small groups, constantly contacting someone by phone."

Tokayev has spoken of an attempted coup and blamed what he called foreign-trained terrorists. He has also criticised the actions of the police and security forces who he said had mishandled the situation. On Friday, he praised Nazarbayev as the founder of modern Kazakhstan.

Zhanbolat Mamai, an opposition politician, said people wearing black and camouflaged clothes and masks attacked him on Almaty's main square on Jan. 5.

"They looked trained and organised," he said.

'TOKAYEV HAS FULL POWERS'

A dissident in Aktau, a Caspian port city about 2,100 km (1,300 miles) west of Almaty, described a group of men dressed in black and wearing masks.

"They did not fear anyone," said the man, who asked not be identified.

Hundreds of masked men also took over Almaty airport on Jan. 5 and Reuters correspondents saw people dressed in black and camouflage and wearing balaclavas on Jan. 6 inside the presidential residence near Almaty mayor's office.

In Aktau, the dissident said the police at one point encouraged protesters to seize the local government building.

Almaty saw the heaviest fighting and destruction. Almaty province is home to the village of Shamalgan, Nazarbayev's birthplace, and is regarded as his clan's stronghold.

Shortly after security forces subdued the unrest, a grim-faced Nazarbayev appeared on state television saying Tokayev had full powers.

"I handed over my powers to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2019 and have since been a pensioner, and I am now (living) in retirement in Kazakhstan's capital and have not gone anywhere," he said, addressing rumours that he was abroad. "President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has full powers."

Although he said there was "no conflict or confrontation within the elite", a number of Nazarbayev's relatives have since been removed or resigned from key positions in state security, government, state companies and lobby groups.

Tokayev said on Friday the authorities were still working to establish those responsible for the violence. He also dismissed "insinuations" about Nazarbayev and praised him as the founder of modern Kazakhstan.

"Let us give due credit to the historic achievements of the first president, focus on his undeniable successes and virtues, and regard the possible mistakes as lessons for the future rulers of our country," Tokayev's office quoted him as saying.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

VMI leader blasts white critics of diversity in scathing Facebook post

Fri, January 28, 2022, 


Former Army Major General Cedric T. Wins, the first Black superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, wrote a strongly worded Facebook post last week in response to a person who accused VMI of teaching "critical race theory," The Washington Post reports.

Carmen D. Villani Jr., a white VMI alumnus, appeared on a Richmond radio show earlier this month, encouraging fellow alumni to ask the Virginia state legislature to "look very seriously" at the school's funding proposal and warning that critical race theory had "entered into the VMI realm."

VMI recently requested an extra $6.1 million in funding to pay for reforms after a state-ordered investigation found that the school harbors a "racist and sexist culture."

Wins responded to Villani's comments in a VMI Facebook group of 3,700 members, telling him, "You advised the listeners to urge the members of the General Assembly to 'look very seriously' at VMI's funding request, a request you have no understanding about. VMI's funding request will pale in comparison to that of the other public colleges in the state. You have no understanding of DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] or what it means, or how much of the funding for DEI is represented in our request."

Wins also rejected Villani's comment about critical race theory, calling it "categorically false."

The additional $6.1 million requested by VMI would provide more funding for Title IX and diversity offices, pay for three admissions counselors geared toward underrepresented students and help rebrand Confederate tributes around the school.

Villani responded with his own post Thursday, claiming that he and Wins were "able to find some common ground" in a conversation they had after the disagreement. He said that the college should focus on "equality/ability not equity; inclusiveness based upon 'content of character."

Results released last year from a probe by the Barnes & Thornburg law firm "found that institutional racism and sexism are present, tolerated, and left unaddressed at VMI."

"Although VMI has no explicitly racist or sexist policies that it enforces, the facts reflect an overall racist and sexist culture," it said.

Japan to push controversial mine for UNESCO World Heritage


FILE - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivers a speech during a New Year celebration party of business leaders in Tokyo, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022. Kishida said Friday, Jan. 28, 2022, that Japan will recommend a former gold mine on Sado Island for a UNESCO World Heritage list, despite protests from South Korea that the site is inappropriate because of its wartime abuse of Korean laborers — a sensitive issue that still strains ties between the neighbors.

 (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, File) 

MARI YAMAGUCHI
Fri, January 28, 2022

TOKYO (AP) — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that Japan will recommend a former gold mine on Sado Island for a UNESCO World Heritage list, despite protests from South Korea that the site is inappropriate because of its wartime abuse of Korean laborers — a sensitive issue that still strains ties between the neighbors.

Kishida's decision to nominate the 400-year-old site in northern Japan apparently reverses his earlier, more cautious stance after a strong push by powerful ultra-rightwing historical revisionists in his governing party.

Kishida said the Sado mine is valuable in Japan's industrial history.

“Despite its high value, I understand that there are various views about its registration ... That's why we want to start discussions early," he said.

The Sado mine was selected last month by Japan’s Council for Cultural Affairs as a candidate for a UNESCO World Heritage site, triggering South Korean protests.

Seoul opposes Japan’s nomination because many Koreans brought to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula were put to forced labor at the mine.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed “strong regret” over the Japanese decision and urged Tokyo to stop the effort. Second Vice Minister Choi Jong-moon summoned Japanese Ambassador Koichi Aiboshi to lodge a protest over the issue.

Historians say Japan used hundreds of thousands of Korean laborers, including those forcibly brought from the Korean Peninsula, at mines and factories to make up for labor shortages, as most working-age men were sent to battlefronts across Asia and the Pacific.

The town and prefectural sites praise the Sado mine for demonstrating outstanding mining technology development before and after industrialization, once becoming the world’s largest gold producer before its closure in 1989. There is no mention of its wartime use of Korean laborers.

The Sado nomination recalls Japan's 2015 registration of the Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, in Nagasaki, as part of UNESCO “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution." South Korean protests about the site omitting mention that Koreans also toiled on the island triggered a UNESCO decision urging Japan to present a more balanced version of history.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry demanded Friday that Japan educate its people about Korean laborers abused during the Japanese colonial rule, a promise Tokyo made when Gunkanjima was registered.

Kishida said a “calm and thorough discussion” should be held over the planned registration of the Sado mine. Kishida said his Cabinet will formally approve the recommendation of Sado on Tuesday.

Kishida’s government previously considered delaying the nomination but apparently reversed itself after facing growing pressure from former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his supporters, who are known for their efforts to whitewash Japan’s wartime past.

“It is wrong to not recommend it by avoiding a war of words. We should fight back with facts,” Abe said last week at a meeting of his group within the ruling party. His protégé and party policy chief Sanae Takaichi told a parliamentary session this week that the issue is “a matter of Japan’s honor.”

Relations between Tokyo and Seoul are currently at their lowest level in years due to disputes stemming from Japan’s sexual abuse of Korean women and use of forced laborers before and during World War II.

The government is expected to submit a letter of recommendation to UNESCO by the Feb. 1 deadline.

If everything goes as planned, a UNESCO advisory group will survey the mine site in the fall before deciding around May 2023 whether to add it to the list ahead of the World Heritage Committee screening.

___

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

California museum returns massacre remains to Wiyot Tribe




This Dec. 21, 2010 photo provided by Aldaron Laird shows Tulawat, the site of the Indian Island Massacre, where members of the Wiyot Tribe were killed in 1860. The remains of 20 Native Americans massacred in the 1860s on the Northern California island have been returned to their tribe from a museum where they had been in storage. The tribe's historic preservation officer says the remains will be reunited with their families. (Aldaron Laird via AP)


BRIAN MELLEY
Wed, January 26, 2022

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The most vulnerable members of the Wiyot Tribe were asleep the morning of Feb. 26, 1860, when a band of white men slipped into their Northern California villages under darkness and slaughtered them.

Many of the children, women and elderly slain in what became known as the Indian Island Massacre had their eternal rest disturbed when their graves were later dug up and their skeletons and the artifacts buried with them were placed in a museum.

After nearly 70 years of separation from their tribe, the remains of at least 20 of those believed to have been killed have been returned home.


“They’re going to be at peace and at rest with our other ancestors,” Ted Hernandez, the Wiyot Tribe's historic preservation officer, said Tuesday after the repatriation was announced. “They’ll be able to reunite with their families.”

The return is part of an effort by some institutions to do a better job complying with federal law that requires giving tribes back items looted from sacred burial sites.

Grave robbing was yet another indignity suffered by Native Americans and their descendants long after they were driven from their lands or killed. Hobbyists, collectors and even prominent researchers took part in the desecration of burial sites. Skulls, bones and antiquities were sold, traded, studied and displayed in museums.

Cutcha Risling Baldy, a professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University, said returning the sacred items provides healing to tribes.

She criticized museums and universities that warehouse items that objectify Native Americans and reduce them to historical objects and artifacts rather than people.

“From a spiritual perspective, from a cultural perspective or even a human perspective, it’s hard to imagine the graves of your ancestors being dug up and then put into a museum,” Risling Baldy said. “It kind of creates a mythology around Native people that we are somehow specimens, rather than people and human beings.”

The bones of the Wiyot were recovered in 1953 after being discovered near where a jetty was constructed outside the city of Eureka, 225 miles (362 kilometers) north of San Francisco, according to a notice last year in the Federal Register.

A team from University of California, Berkeley collected the remains and put them in storage with 136 artifacts buried with them — mainly beads and ornaments made from shells, an arrowhead from a broken bottle fragment, a sinker for a fishing net, bone tools and an elk tooth.

The gravesites were where the Wiyot buried some of their dead following a devastating series of mass slayings at a dozen of their villages over the course of a week in 1860.

The unprovoked killings occurred in the midst of the tribe's World Renewal Ceremony, a 10-day peaceful celebration with food, dance and prayer to return balance to the Earth, Hernandez said.

After the ceremony, the tribe's men left for the night, paddling from the island to the mainland to hunt and fish for food and gather firewood for the next day’s feast.

In the early morning, raiders arrived by canoe across the bay and stabbed, beat or hacked the victims with knives, clubs and hatchets. Several other attacks were carried out that night, and more killings occurred over the next five days, said Jerry Rohde, a Humboldt County historian.

More than 50 people were killed on the island, and as many as 500 may have been killed in the course of the week, Rohde said. An account in the New York Times put the death toll at 188.

The group of vigilantes were dubbed the “Thugs" but never named publicly or held accountable.

A young Bret Harte, who would go on to become one of the most popular writers of the day, wrote a scathing editorial about the bloodshed in The Northern Californian, a newspaper in the city just to the north.

“When the bodies were landed at Union, a more shocking and revolting spectacle never was exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people,” he wrote.

But that was not the popular opinion in the area, Rohde said. The Humboldt Times editor had advocated for the removal or extermination of Native people. Harte fled to San Francisco after death threats.

Some of the men bragged about the killings, and two others who were said to take part went on to be elected to the state Legislature, Rohde said.

The Wiyot began seeking return of their ancestors in 2016 under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The act made it illegal to steal from the graves and required government institutions to return items in their possession.

But getting those back has not always been easy.

UC Berkeley, which held the remains at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, denied the request, citing lack of evidence, said Tom Torma, the university's repatriation coordinator.

Torma was aware of the case because he submitted the request as the Wiyot's historical preservation officer at the time.

A 2020 state audit found the University of California had an inconsistent policy in how it repatriated remains. While the University of California, Los Angeles had returned most eligible remains, Berkeley had returned only 20%.

UC Berkeley, which houses remains of 10,000 Native Americans — the largest collection in the U.S. — also regularly required additional evidence that delayed returns, the audit said.

The campus has had a racial reckoning with the past in recent years, including its history with Native Americans.

Last year, the university stripped the name of Alfred Kroeber from the hall housing the anthropology department and museum. Kroeber, a pioneer in American anthropology, collected or authorized collection of Native Americans remains for research.

He was best known for taking custody of Ishi, called “last of the Yahi," who emerged from the wilderness in 1911. The man performed as a living exhibit for museum visitors, demonstrating how to make stone tools and crafts.

The university system revised its repatriation policy, based in part on input from tribes, last year. A new committee at UC Berkeley took a more proactive approach and determined there was enough evidence to return the Wiyot items, Torma said.

The repatriation was jointly made with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for the jetty construction that may have unearthed the remains.

For the Wiyot Tribe, the repatriation last fall came two years after the island known now as Tulawat, was returned to the tribe by the city of Eureka.

It's now up to tribal elders to determine what to do with the remains, Hernandez said.

The dead are already a part of their ceremonies. When the dancing and praying is done, the sacred fires are left burning for their forebears.

“They’ll be able to continue the ceremonies in the afterlife,” Hernandez said.

Pennsylvania woman being treated for rabies after encountering monkey in aftermath of crash


Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Thu, January 27, 2022

A woman who happened upon the Friday crash of a pickup towing a trailer transporting 100 monkeys is being treated after a monkey spit at her and she developed pink-eye symptoms.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the accident, which occurred on an east-central Pennsylvania highway, and the subsequent attempts to round up some of the cynomolgus macaque monkeys who had escaped from their crates.

The accident involved the collision of the pickup and a dump truck near the Danville exit on Interstate 80. Pennsylvania State Police said several monkeys had escaped following Friday's collision and one remained unaccounted for overnight.

Michele Fallon, the Danville, Pennsylvania woman who came upon the crash told the Press Enterprise newspaper when she and another motorist who stopped to help, the other driver said he thought he saw a cat run across the road.

Since Fallon's comments about the incident have been in local and national news, she told USA TODAY some people are accusing her of being paid by the media to talk about the crash – and for not using common sense at the accident site.

At the time, Fallon said after she learned the crates contained monkeys, she assumed they were being transported to a zoo because the driver never mentioned anything about the monkeys being imported and being transported to a lab.

"If I had been told … I would never have touched anything," Fallon said. About going to get medical treatment after developing a cough, runny nose and pinkeye-like symptoms, Fallon said, "I wanted to be cautious. I even told the doctors I don't want to overreact on this, but I don't want to underreact either."

A young long-tailed macaque monkey, also known as a cynomolgus or crab-eating macaque monkey, in Cambodia. This monkey was released after biological samples were collected to study the types of infectious agents that they may harbor or have been exposed to.

Some local residents, Fallon said, "are making out like, 'Oh, I have this new monkey virus. It's a monkey pox and there is going to be an outbreak. … It's just a monkey hissed in my face. That's all that happened. I want to protect myself."

Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email to the Associated Press Saturday night that all 100 of the monkeys had been accounted for. Three were euthanized.

Fallon, who will be on preventative medicine for about two weeks, shared a letter she got from the CDC dated Jan. 21 in which she is told that if she was within 5 feet of the crates holding the monkeys and not wearing personal protective equipment, she should be alert to any illnesses in the next month. The CDC requires a minimum quarantine of 31 days for monkeys after they arrive in the U.S., the letter said.

PETA criticized the CDC for what it considers shoddy follow-up in the aftermath of the incident. Persons scratched or bitten by a macaque monkey are at risk for the Herpes B Virus, as well as other diseases including salmonella, tuberculosis, yellow fever and other illnesses, according to the CDC's site.

Reports from the scene suggested that "feces and urine from the terrified monkeys were reportedly smeared across the highway as crates – that weren’t strapped in as required – flew from the truck, and the CDC should be scrambling to ensure that numerous people who were at the scene aren’t in danger," PETA said.

Follow-up is not only important for passersby who came across the accident but for first responders, Lisa Jones-Engel, senior science advisor for primate experimentation at PETA, told USA TODAY. "I'm surprised the CDC has not been more responsive to the first responders on this."

After Fallon checked on the health of the pickup driver and passenger at the crash site, Fallon told USA TODAY she began checking the trailer it had been pulling. Some crates had come out of the trailer and she was concerned for the animals, which at the time she assumed were cates.

She pulled up a cloth covering one of the crates and stuck her finger inside the chicken wire enveloping it and "I hear this weird noise," Fallon said. When she tried to get a closer look, "it just pops his head up and hisses at me. It's a monkey."

After the incident, Fallon said she developed the symptoms and went to the emergency room Sunday where she began a series of rabies shots and antibiotics – she had an open cut that concerned health care workers – and tested negative for COVID. Fallon, who is 45, is uncertain if the symptoms are related because her family had been ill recently, too. And two people who attended a party she went to Saturday later tested positive for COVID-19.

"So I'm like, maybe that's where my symptoms are coming from, because I was around people who had been sick," she said. "It's like I went from a monkey situation to a COVID party situation. It's ridiculous."

USDA spokesman Andre Bell told USA TODAY the agency is looking into PETA’s letter. The CDC did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.

PETA asked the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to investigate the incident for potential violations in the transportation and handling of the monkeys, which PETA said were en route to a laboratory in Missouri. "We believe the handling and treatment of monkeys before, during and after the collision may constitute violations," PETA vice president Alka Chandna, said in a letter addressed to Robert Gibbens, director of animal welfare operations at the USDA's APHIS.
https://www.scribd.com/document/555000513/Concerns-From-PETA-Re-Vehicular-Crash-in-Pennsylvania-w-Addendum#download&from_embed

Crates holding live monkeys are collected next to the trailer they were being transported in along state Route 54 at the intersection with Interstate 80 near Danville, Pa., Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, after a pickup pulling the trailer carrying the monkeys was hit by a dump truck.

In laboratories, workers wear personal protective equipment to protect them from monkeys' bodily fluids, scratches and bites. Any exposures, such as the kind Fallon has described, "are immediately treated following strict and rigorous protocols to reduce the risk of disease transmission," Jones-Engel said.

About 1.2 million macaque monkeys have been imported into the U.S. since 1975, Jones-Engel said. She provided a CDC PowerPoint presentation showing the number of non-human primates imported declining between 2019 and 2020 – China is limiting how many it exports – and more animals reported dead on arrival and dying during quarantine.

"In the end, this doesn't work," she said. "The monkeys are not giving us the treatments, they're not giving us the vaccines. All we're doing is increasing the risk for the human population. "

An editorial in the Press Enterprise took a different tack, suggesting that studies on monkeys and primates are essential to medical research including helping "wounded soldiers and stroke victims regain independence after losing limbs or the control over them," it wrote.

It’s easy to understand why many people found themselves on the monkeys’ side when they broke loose of their cages near Danville and fled for freedom," the editorial said. "They’re furry, cute, intelligent animals. And our nation’s labs should be doing absolutely everything possible to ensure the minimum number of animals are subjected to tests that will secure a scientifically valid result. … But if we value the medical advancement non-human primate research has brought, we must also recognize shipments like the one that crashed in Danville on Friday are needed."

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Monkey encounter at Pennsylvania crash: Woman being treated for rabies

Oregon tribes boost stake in key renewable energy project

Utility says the resource ‘plays an important, and difficult to replace, role’ in its portfolio.


By Pete Danko – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal
Jan 27, 2022

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have pushed their ownership stake in Portland General Electric’s Pelton Round Butte hydroelectric project in central Oregon from one-third to just shy of 50%.

Both parties said the move reflects the close partnership they have forged over an energy resource type that elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest has delivered little but pain to Native Americans.

“It could have been a completely different story, but we’re working together to make progress in the right direction,” James Manion, general manager of Warm Springs Power and Water Enterprises, said.

Pelton Round Butte, which adjoins the Warm Springs Reservation, was completed in 1964 with three dams on a 20-mile stretch of the Deschutes River.

Under a 2000 agreement, the tribes acquired their one-third stake on the last day of 2001, with an option to purchase another one-sixth share in 20 years. They recently exercised that option, giving them a 49.99% ownership stake. The agreement gives the tribes the further option of boosting their ownership to 50.01% in 2037.

Like all major hydro projects, Pelton Round Butte has faced habitat-impact issues. An ongoing challenge is managing dam operations to keep water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels within acceptable bounds.

At the same time, its importance for PGE (NYSE: POR) has only grown as climate change had put a premium on clean energy, especially clean energy that can be counted on at virtually any time.

The tribes have always sold their portion of Pelton Round Butte’s energy and capacity to PGE, and will continue to do so under a new deal reached last year that runs through 2040. That revenue stream will help address the debt service for the tribes’ expanded ownership, Manion said.

PGE said the agreement will reduce a forecasted 2025 capacity shortfall from 511 megawatts to 287 megawatts. In a filing, PGE said Pelton Round Butte is its “largest hydroelectric on-system resource and thus plays an important, and difficult to replace, role in PGE’s portfolio.” It generates enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes.

Group warns of potential catastrophe on old tanker off Yemen


This satellite image provided by Planet Labs PBC shows FSO Safer in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, Jan. 9, 2022. A 42-page Greenpeace report warned Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, of a potential major oil leak or explosion on the aging oil tanker. The rusting, neglected Japanese-built tanker has been moored in its location 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) away from Yemen’s western Red Sea port of Ras Issa since the 1980s, when it was sold to the Yemeni government.

 (Planet Labs PBC via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

NOHA ELHENNAWY
Thu, January 27, 2022

CAIRO (AP) — A leading environmental group warned Thursday of a potential major oil leak or explosion on an aging oil tanker moored off of Yemen's Red Sea coast. The neglected vessel is loaded with more than a million barrels of crude oil.

Greenpeace released a report listing the environmental, humanitarian and economic impacts of a potential oil spill from the FSO Safer on conflict-riddled Yemen and the Red Sea region in general.

“The event could be one of the biggest oil spill disasters in history and would cause widespread severe environmental damage and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country,” the group said in its report.

The rusting, neglected Japanese-built tanker has been moored in its location 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) away from Yemen’s western Red Sea port of Ras Issa since the 1980s, when it was sold to the Yemeni government. Prior to the escalation of Yemen's conflict in 2015, the vessel was used to store and export oil from fields in eastern Marib province.
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Fighters of the UAE-trained Giants Brigade patrol at the Harib junction, Bayhan district, in Yemen's Shabwa governorate, on January 19, 2022

The 42-page Greenpeace report argues that an oil spill or explosion on the tanker would lead to the closure of desalination plants in Yemen, which will eventually disrupt the supply of drinking water to nearly 10 million people.

“The entire Red Sea region’s drinking water supply could be contaminated by oil in just three weeks following a spill,” said Greenpeace.

A major spill would also lead to the closure of Yemen's western ports, including Hodeida and Salif, through which 68% of aid is brought into the Arab world's poorest country, the report said. Up to 8.4 million people relying on food aid supplies would be affected, said the Amsterdam-based advocacy group.

An oil leak would also cause the closure of fisheries, the rise of air pollution levels in the region and the disruption of shipping traffic through Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal, said the report.

Internal documents obtained by The Associated Press in 2020 show that seawater has entered the tanker's engine compartment, causing damage to pipes and increasing the risk of sinking. Rust has covered parts of the tanker and the inert gas that prevents the tanks from gathering flammable gases has leaked out. Experts say maintenance is no longer possible because the damage to the ship is irreversible, according to the AP report.

“The question is no longer whether the catastrophe will happen. The question is when it will happen,” Greenpeace MENA Campaigns Manager Ahmed El Droubi told reporters in a virtual news conference Thursday.

Ras Issa is controlled by the country's Houthi rebels. Since 2015, the Houthis have been at war with the internationally recognized government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition and the United States.

Last month, a Yemeni official with the U.N.-recognized government said there was an oil leak from the tanker. Undersecretary of Hodeida province Waleed al-Qudaimi blamed the situation on the U.N. Security Council and called on countries bordering the Red Sea to act urgently.

The U.N. has constantly warned of the catastrophic impact of a potential leak from the aging and neglected tanker. However, none of its diplomatic efforts to resolve the matter has materialized. Last year, the U.N. accused the rebels of using the tanker as a “bargaining chip” to advance their political agenda in Yemen.

“The technology and expertise to transfer the oil to other tankers exist, but despite months of negotiations we are still at a stalemate,” said Paul Horsman, project leader of Greenpeace's Safer response team. “It is really time to put aside the politics and agree on a contingency plan.”

Horsman told reporters that his group is calling for the deployment of a containment boom around the tanker as a first line of defense. Booms are interconnected floating barriers that are usually spread across the water to stop a major oil spill.

“The boom is not a solution but it could potentially buy us time in case there is a spill,” said Horsman. “The only solution is to move the oil safely from Safer to another tanker.”

Chris Johnson, a U.N. senior policy advisor who was present during the release of the Greenpeace report, said the U.N. is already working on bringing a boom from Djibouti to Hodeida port. She added that the U.N. is pursuing with diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement between the Houthis, the Saudi-led-coalition and the Yemeni government to resolve the matter.

Meanwhile, the U.N. is trying to locate a suitable vessel to which the oil could be transferred, Johnson told reporters.