Bringing Lolita home: How to release a long-captive orca?

By GENE JOHNSON

an hour ago

Karen McRea feeds frozen fish to Keiko, star of the movie "Free Willy," in his pen off the coast of Westman Islands, Iceland, on April 22, 1999. An ambitious plan announced last week to return a killer whale, held captive for more than a half-century, to her home waters in Washington’s Puget Sound thrilled those who have long advocated for her to be freed from her tank at the Miami Seaquarium. But it also called to mind the release of Keiko, who failed to adapt to the wild after being returned to his native Iceland and died five years later. (AP Photo/Kristin Gazlay, File)

SEATTLE (AP) — An ambitious plan announced last week to return Lolita, a killer whale held captive for more than a half-century, to her home waters in Washington’s Puget Sound thrilled those who have long advocated for her to be freed from her tank at the Miami Seaquarium.

But it also called to mind the release of Keiko — the star of the movie “Free Willy” — more than two decades ago. Keiko’s return to his native Iceland vastly improved upon his life in a Mexico City tank, but he failed to adapt to the wild and died five years later.

He is the only orca released after long-term captivity. Some of Lolita’s former caregivers are warning she could face a similar fate — or that she might not survive a move across the country.

But advocates say there are big differences between the cases and that their experience with Keiko will inform how they plan for Lolita’s return.

While they hope to bring Lolita — also known as Tokitae, or Toki — to a whale sanctuary among the Pacific Northwest’s many islands, they know she might never again swim freely with her endangered family, including the nearly century-old whale believed to be her mother.

Here’s a look at Tokitae’s story.

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HOW DID TOKI WIND UP IN CAPTIVITY?

Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest revere orcas, considering them their relatives.

White settlers had a different view. Fishermen reviled the “blackfish” as competition for salmon and sometimes shot them.

That began to change in 1965, when a man named Ted Griffin bought a killer whale that had been caught in a fisherman’s net in British Columbia and towed it to the Seattle waterfront. The whale — Namu — became a sensation.

Namu soon died from an infection, but Griffin had set off a craze for capturing the Pacific Northwest’s killer whales and training them to perform, as The Seattle Times recounted in a 2018 history. Griffin corralled dozens of orcas off Washington’s Whidbey Island in 1970. Several got caught and drowned when opponents cut the nets, intending to free them.

Many orcas remained nearby, declining to leave as their clan members were hauled out of the water. Among those kept was 4-year-old Tokitae, later sold to the Miami Seaquarium.

By the early 1970s, at least 13 Northwest orcas had been killed and 45 delivered to theme parks around the world; Toki is the only one still alive. The roundups reduced the Puget Sound resident population by about 40% and helped cause problems with inbreeding that imperil them today.

Outrage over the captures helped prompt the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

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WHY BRING TOKI HOME?

Lolita, now 57, spent decades performing. Last year the Miami Seaquarium announced it would no longer feature her under an agreement with regulators. The 5,000-pound (2,267-kilogram) animal lives in a tank 80 feet by 35 feet (24 meters by 11 meters) and 20 feet (6 meters) deep.

Whales are intelligent, social creatures, and activists have long dreamed of returning Tokitae to her family.

The whale believed to be Toki’s mother is the matriarch of L-pod, one of three clans that make up the so-called southern resident killer whales, a genetically and socially distinct population that frequents the Salish Sea between Washington and British Columbia. There are 73 southern residents remaining.

Plans call for bringing Lolita to a netted whale sanctuary of about 15 acres (6 hectares). She would be released into an enclosure the size of a couple football fields within that sanctuary, where she would be under round-the-clock care.

“The first objective is to provide her the highest quality of life we can,” said Charles Vinick, a founder of the nonprofit Friends of Toki as well as executive director of the Whale Sanctuary Project. “Whether or not it becomes the dream of having her reunite with L-pod is something we have to rely on Lolita to show us.”

Because the southern residents are endangered, advocates would have to obtain additional permits if they ever wanted to return Toki fully to the wild. Advocates would likely have to show that introducing another aging whale to feed wouldn’t burden the population further.

With financial backing from Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, they have agreed to support Lolita long term, whether she’s reintroduced or not.

A group of some of Lolita’s former caregivers called Truth 4 Toki announced an online petition Tuesday to keep her in Florida — perhaps in a pool at SeaWorld Orlando, where she can live alongside the two Pacific white-sided dolphins she has lived with for the past 30 years.

“I am certain this is NOT in her best interest,” one of her former trainers, Alli Hagan, said in a news release announcing the petition. “Moving her across the country to a seapen is a dangerous and unnecessary.”

But for Raynell Morris, an elder of the Lummi Indian Tribe in Washington and a board member of Friends of Toki, the whale’s return is fundamental.

“Until she’s returned to her family, our family is broken,” Morris said. “When she comes home, the web of life will be repaired and restored, and our people will be repaired and restored.”

Trainer Marcia Hinton pets Lolita, a captive orca whale, during a performance at the Miami Seaquarium in Miami, March 9, 1995. An unlikely coalition made up of a theme park owner, an animal rights group, a mayor and a philanthropist who owns an NFL team announced Thursday, March 30, 2023, that a plan is in place to return Lolita — an orca that has lived in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium for more than 50 years — to its home waters in the Pacific Northwest. (Nuri Vallbona/Miami Herald via AP, File)

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HOW DO YOU MOVE A 2.5-TON WHALE?

When all the pieces are in place — which could take two years — and Lolita is deemed healthy enough to move, she will be put on a stretcher. She’ll be lifted by crane into a tank placed on a truck, and the truck driven to a cargo plane.

She’ll be flown to Washington, loaded onto a barge, floated to the sanctuary, and lowered by crane into her new home.

Toki’s transportation tank will be filled with fresh water — salt water could ruin the plane in the event of a leak. Her caregivers will protect her skin with ointment.

Advocates will work with Washington’s Department of Natural Resources to pick the sanctuary site.

There, Toki can begin recovering the strength she might need to rejoin wild orcas, to relearn to hunt and to travel around 100 miles (161 kilometers) per day.

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WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM KEIKO?

Keiko was about 2 when he was captured in 1979. He spent time in Iceland and Canada before being sold in 1985 to a theme park in Mexico City, where he lived in a tank filled with tap water mixed with salt.

In 1993 he was featured in “Free Willy,” prompting a campaign by schoolchildren to get him released. A facility was built at the Oregon Coast Aquarium where the emaciated Keiko could recover before his return to Iceland.

Keiko gained about 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms) in his first year in Oregon.

Vinick, who helped manage Keiko’s return, noted that it was always designed as a reintroduction effort. Keiko was in his early 20s — still young for an orca — when he was brought to Iceland in 1998. To teach him to hunt, trainers would launch fish around his pen with a sling shot. Eventually they began escorting him on longer swims in the open ocean.

While Keiko would approach wild orcas at times, he would return to his trainers’ boat and generally sought out humans. He swam to Norway on his own — a journey of nearly 1,000 miles (1,609 km). But there again he was attracted to boats and people, and he died, apparently of pneumonia, at about age 27.

“We already knew how easy it is to capture whales,” Vinick said. “What we learned with Keiko is how difficult it is to put one back.”

Malene Simon of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, who conducted a scientific review of Keiko’s release, said she was pessimistic about Lolita’s chances to learn to hunt after 52 years of being fed by humans.

Still, Tokitae has some advantages. She was slightly older when she was captured, so she would have been already learning to hunt, and she might have more memory of her family songs. Further, researchers know who her family is, unlike with Keiko.

“It’ll be therapeutic for her, and she’ll get healthier,” said Howard Garrett, president of the board of the advocacy group Orca Network. “This is a step toward righting a great wrong that humans have done.”

AFTER NASHVILLE MASS SHOOTING AT ELEM. SCHOOL

Tennessee House moves to expel 3 Democrats after gun protest

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI

today

Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones calls on his colleagues to pass gun control legislation from the well of the House Chambers during the legislative session at the State Capitol Thursday, March 30, 2023 in Nashville, Tenn. (George Walker IV /The Tennessean via AP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Republican lawmakers took the first steps Monday to expel three Democratic members from the GOP-dominant House for their role in a recent gun control protest at the state Capitol.

The extraordinarily rare move resulted in a chaotic and fiery confrontation between lawmakers and supporters opposing the move and has further fractured an already deep political division inside the Tennessee Legislature.

Resolutions have been filed against Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson after they led chants from the House floor with supporters in the gallery last Thursday. The resolution declared that the three had participated in “disorderly behavior” and “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”

Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso, and Andrew Farmer filed the resolutions. They successfully requested Monday that the House expedite the process and vote on the resolutions Thursday.

Despite support from the Republican supermajority, their requests sparked outrage among supporters watching in the gallery. Their loud jeers led House Speaker Cameron Sexton to demand that they be removed by state troopers. Also during the turmoil, several lawmakers engaged in a confrontation on the House floor. Jones later accused another member of stealing his phone and trying to “incite a riot with his fellow members.”

Hundreds of protesters packed the Capitol last week calling for the Republican-led Statehouse to pass gun control measures in response to the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people. As the chants echoed throughout the Capitol, Jones, Johnson and Pearson approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn.

As the three shared the bullhorn and cheered on the crowd, Sexton, a Republican, quickly called for a recess. He later vowed the three would face consequences. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Karen Camper described their actions as “good trouble,” a reference to the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ guiding principal.

By Monday, Sexton confirmed that the three lawmakers had been stripped of their committee assignments and said more punishments could be on the way. A few hours later, House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison referred to Jones as the “former representative” during the evening session.

Pearson and Jones are both freshman lawmakers. Johnson has served in the House since 2019. All three have been highly critical of the Republican supermajority. Jones was temporarily banned from the Tennessee Capitol in 2019 after throwing a cup of liquid at former House Speaker Glen Casada and other lawmakers while protesting the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest inside the Capitol.

Expelling lawmakers is an extraordinary action inside the Tennessee Capitol. Just two other House members have ever been ousted from the chamber since the Civil War.

Alaska oil plan opponents lose 1st fight over Willow project

By BECKY BOHRER

today

 An ice-covered ConocoPhillips sign is displayed at the Colville-Delta 5, or as it's more commonly known, CD5, drilling site on Alaska's North Slope, Feb. 9, 2016. Construction can proceed related to a major oil project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope after a federal judge on Monday, April 3, 2023, rejected requests to halt work until challenges to the Biden administration’s recent approval are resolved. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Environmentalists lost the first round of their legal battle over a major oil project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope on Monday as a judge rejected their requests to halt immediate construction work related to the Willow project, but they vowed not to give up.

The court’s decision means ConocoPhillips Alaska can forge ahead with cold-weather construction work, including mining gravel and using it for a road toward the Willow project. Environmentalists worry that noise from blasting and road construction could affect caribou.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason said she took into account support for the project by Alaska political leaders — including state lawmakers and Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation. She said she also gave “considerable weight” to the support for Willow by an Alaska Native village corporation, an Alaska Native regional corporation and the North Slope Borough, while also recognizing that project support among Alaska Natives is not unanimous.




Environmental groups and an Alaska Native organization, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, had asked Gleason to delay construction related to Willow while their lawsuits are pending. They ultimately want Gleason to overturn the project’s approval, saying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to consider an adequate range of alternatives.

Gleason said the construction work that ConocoPhillips Alaska plans for this month is “substantially narrower in scope than the Willow Project as a whole,” and the groups did not succeed in showing it would cause irreparable harm before she makes a decision on the merits of the cases.

Rebecca Boys, a company spokesperson, said ConocoPhillips Alaska appreciates the backing it has received from those “who recognize that Willow will provide meaningful opportunities for Alaska Native communities and the state of Alaska, and domestic energy for America.”

To prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, including even more extreme weather, the head of the United Nations recently called for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040.

A ConocoPhillips Alaska executive, Stephen Bross, warned in court documents that an order blocking construction could make it “impossible” for the project to begin production by Sept. 1, 2029, and the company risks having its leases expire if the unit hasn’t produced oil by then.
One of the suits, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of numerous environmental groups, says the government analyzed an inadequate range of alternatives “based on the mistaken conclusion that it must allow ConocoPhillips to fully develop its leases.” It also says the environmental review underlying Willow’s approval didn’t assess the full climate consequences of authorizing the project because it didn’t analyze greenhouse gas emissions from other projects in the region that could follow.

The Willow project is in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where there has been debate over how much of the region should be available to oil and gas development.

The Biden administration in 2022 limited oil and gas leasing to just over half the reserve, which is home to polar bears, caribou, millions of migratory birds and other wildlife. There are multiple exploration and development projects within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Willow project, including other discoveries being pursued by ConocoPhillips Alaska, the state’s largest oil producer.

The other lawsuit, filed by Trustees for Alaska on behalf of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and environmental groups, said federal agencies failed to take a “hard look at the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts” of the Willow project and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to address impacts to polar bears, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Bridget Psarianos, lead staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, said in a statement that Gleason’s decision is “heartbreaking for all who want to protect local communities and prevent more devastating climate impacts in the Arctic and around the world. We will do everything we can to protect the region while the merits of our case get heard.”

Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice in Alaska, said while this round of legal challenges “did not produce the outcome we had hoped for, our court battle continues.”

Justice Department lawyers had argued that last month’s decision by the Biden administration approving Willow was “based in science and consistent with all legal requirements.” They also said the environmental review thoroughly analyzed emissions related to the use of oil produced by the project and called the analysis sought by Earthjustice overreaching.

State political leaders, including Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and labor unions have touted Willow as a job creator, expected to produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s significant, because major existing fields are aging and the flow of oil through the trans-Alaska pipeline is a fraction of what it was at its peak in the late 1980s.

Many Alaska Native leaders on the North Slope and groups with ties to the region have argued that the project is economically vital for their communities. Nagruk Harcharek, president of the Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of the North Slope, called Gleason’s decision “another step forward for Alaska, Alaska Native self-determination, and for America’s energy security.”

But some Alaska Native leaders in the community closest to the project, Nuiqsut, have expressed concerns about impacts to their subsistence lifestyles and worried that their voices haven’t been heard.

Using the oil that Willow would produce over the 30-year life of the project would emit roughly as much greenhouse gas as the combined emissions from 1.7 million passenger cars over the same period. Climate activists say the project flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s pledges to cut carbon emissions and move to clean energy.

The administration has defended the decision on Willow and the president’s climate record. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who opposed Willow when she was a New Mexico congresswoman, last month called the project a “difficult and complex issue” involving leases issued by prior administrations. She said there was “limited decision space” and the administration had “focused on how to reduce the project’s footprint and minimize its impacts to people and to wildlife.”

Global demand for crude is expected to continue rising, according to industry analysts and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

U$A

Community colleges are reeling. ‘The reckoning is here.’

By JON MARCUS, The Hechinger Report

yesterday

1 of 12
Santos Enrique Camara, who dropped out of Shoreline Community College at age 19 in 2015 after completing one semester studying audio engineering, poses for a portrait outside his home Friday, March 24, 2023, in Marysville, Wash. Camara, now 27, had difficulty paying tuition and finding time to do schoolwork while caring for his younger sister. "I seriously tried," he said. "I gave it my all." For now, Camara is happy working as a sous-chef and cook at a local restaurant while planning a tour with one of his two bands. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

When Santos Enrique Camara arrived at Shoreline Community College in Washington state to study audio engineering, he quickly felt lost.

“It’s like a weird maze,” remembered Camara, who was 19 at the time and had finished high school with a 4.0 grade-point average. “You need help with your classes and financial aid? Well, here, take a number and run from office to office and see if you can figure it out.”

Advocates for community colleges defend them as the underdogs of America’s higher education system, left to serve the students who need the most support but without the money to provide it. Critics contend this has become an excuse for poor success rates and for the kind of faceless bureaucracies that ultimately led Camara to drop out after two semesters. He now works in a restaurant and plays in two bands.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of Saving the College Dream, a collaboration between AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, and The Seattle Times, with support from the Solutions Journalism Network.
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With scant advising, many community college students spend time and money on courses that won’t transfer or that they don’t need. Though most intend to move on to get bachelor’s degrees, only a small fraction succeed; fewer than half earn any kind of credential. Even if they do, many employers don’t believe they’re ready for the workforce.

Now these failures are coming home to roost.

RELATED COVERAGE– Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college

Community colleges are far cheaper than four-year schools. Published tuition and fees last year averaged $3,860, versus $39,400 at private and $10,940 at public four-year universities, with many states making community college free.

Yet consumers are abandoning them in droves. The number of students at community colleges has fallen 37% since 2010, or by nearly 2.6 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

“The reckoning is here,” said Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

Community Colleges Facing Enrollment 'Crisis'

Community colleges are in trouble. Their enrollment has fallen by 37% since 2010, and their completion rates are dismal — nearly half of students drop out within a year. (April 3) (AP Video: Manuel Valdes, Teresa Crawford)

Those numbers would be even more grim if they didn’t include high school students taking dual-enrollment courses, according to the Community College Research Center. High school students make up nearly a fifth of community college enrollment.

Yet even as these colleges serve fewer students, their already low success rates have by at least one measure gotten worse.

While four out of five students who begin at a community college say they plan to go on to get a bachelor’s degree, only about one in six of them actually manages to do it. That’s down by nearly 15% since 2020, according to the clearinghouse.

Two-year community colleges have the worst completion rates of any kind of university or college. Like Camara, nearly half of students drop out, within a year, of the community college where they started. Only slightly more than 40% finish within six years.

These frustrated wanderers include a disproportionate share of Black and Hispanic students. Half of all Hispanic and 40% of all Black students in higher education are enrolled at community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges says.

The spurning of community colleges has implications for the national economy, which relies on their graduates to fill many of the jobs in which there are shortages. Those include positions as nurses, dental hygienists, emergency medical technicians, vehicle mechanics and electrical linemen, and in fields including information technology, construction, manufacturing, transportation and law enforcement.

Other factors are also contributing to the enrollment declines. Strong demand in the job market for people without college educations has made it more attractive for many to go to work. Thanks to so-called degree inflation, many jobs that require higher education call for bachelor’s degrees where associate degrees or certificates were once sufficient. And private, regional public and for-profit universities, facing enrollment crises of their own, are competing for the same students.

Many Americans increasingly are questioning the value of going to college at all.

But they are particularly rejecting community college. In Michigan, for instance, the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in community college fell more than three times faster from 2018 to 2021 than the proportion going to four-year universities, according to that state’s Center for Educational Performance and Information

Those who do go complain of red tape and other frustrations.

Megan Parish, who at 26 has been in and out of community college in Arkansas since 2016, said she waits two or three days to get answers from advisers. “I’ve had to go out of my way to find people, and if they didn’t know the answer, they would send me to somebody else, usually by email.” Hearing back from the financial aid office, she said, can take a month.

Oryanan Lewis doesn’t have that kind of time. Lewis, 20, is in her second year at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City, Alabama, where she is pursuing a degree in medical assisting. And she’s already behind.

Lewis has the autoimmune disease lupus and thought she’d get more personal attention at a smaller school than at a four-year university; Chattahoochee has about 1,600 students. But she said she didn’t receive the help she needed until her illness had almost derailed her degree.

She failed three classes and was put on academic probation. Only then did she hear from an intervention program.

“I feel like they should talk to their students more,” Lewis said. “Because a person can have a whole lot going on.”

Employers, meanwhile, are unimpressed with the quality of community college students who manage to graduate. Only about a third agree that community colleges produce graduates who are ready to work, according to a survey released in December by researchers at the Harvard Business School.

Community colleges get less government money to spend, per student, than public four-year universities: $8,695, according to the Center for American Progress, compared with $17,540.

Yet community college students need more support than their counterparts at four-year universities. Twenty-nine percent are the first in their families to go to college, 15% are single parents and 68% work while in school. Twenty-nine percent say they’ve had trouble affording food and 14% affording housing, according to a survey by the Center for Community College Student Engagement.

Community colleges that fail these students can’t just blame their smaller budgets, said Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.

“The lack of resources inside community colleges is a legitimate complaint. But a number of community colleges do extraordinarily well,” Fuller said. “So it’s not impossible.”

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Ellen Dennis for the Seattle Times, Rebecca Griesbach of Al.com and Ira Porter of the Christian Science Monitor contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

EagleCam shows heavy winds blow nest from tree; eaglet dies

By TRISHA AHMED

today

In this video screenshot from Minnesota’s EagleCam provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, an eagle hunkers down in its nest while being battered by strong winds in Ramsey County, Minn., Sunday, April 2, 2023

. (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources via AP)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Viewers of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources EagleCam were heartbroken over the weekend as they watched strong winds from a severe weather system whip a nest holding a newly hatched eaglet out of a tree.

The nature livestream captured the moment the nest fell Sunday morning. A mother eagle crouched in the snow-filled nest as it swayed precariously in the wind. A branch snapped, and the nest collapsed as the mother flew backward. The young eagle was later found dead on the ground, the department said in a statement.

“I was actually crying,” said Denise Chung, who said she and her kids watched the nest fall in real time. She told The Associated Press it hit her particularly hard because she knew the eagle lost its baby. “I don’t know if it would have hit me so hard if I weren’t a mom.”

The nest weighed over 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) and was over 20 years old, the statement said. The department said heavy snow that fell over the weekend — coupled with the weight of the nest — likely just became too much for the branch to support.

Minnesota’s EagleCam has mesmerized viewers around the globe for years. People from 180 countries and all 50 U.S. states tuned in three years ago to watch other eaglets hatch, said Department of Natural Resources information officer Lori Naumann.

“During the pandemic, a lot of people couldn’t get outside,” Naumann said. “So, they tended to turn to nature cameras for mental health improvement.”

Over 15,000 people are members of Facebook groups dedicated to Minnesota’s EagleCam, including Chung, who told the AP that she has followed the EagleCam for about four years with her kids and husband.

Chung said she posted to Facebook after the nest fell because she couldn’t get through to the Department of Natural Resources on the phone. She didn’t know the department was already sending staff to help, so she wanted to alert others that the chick — which had just hatched days earlier — was in danger.

The adult eagles were seen flying around the area after the nest fell, the department’s statement said. Though the nesting season is too short for the mother to lay another egg this year, the department said it is likely that the parents will rebuild in the same area because eagles are loyal to their territory.

“This is an emotional time for all of us, but please refrain from visiting the nest,” the department said. “This was already a major disturbance for the eagles and many visitors will only cause more stress.”

The department said the camera will stay on for now.

Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Trisha Ahmed on Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

Ghosts in their machines: Thai livestream spooks a new generation

Agence France-Presse
April 03, 2023

It's almost midnight, and above a semi-abandoned Bangkok mall, Ghost Radio is on air, with host Watcharapol Fukjaidee broadcasting live from his studio © Jack TAYLOR / AFP

It is almost midnight, and above a semi-abandoned Bangkok shopping centre, Ghost Radio is on air.

Rapid-fire comments ping across the studio's screens as thousands tune in online to hear callers describe their encounters with Thailand's supernatural.

Belief in spirits runs deep in the kingdom, which has a celebrated canon of ghosts from individuals like Mae Nak, a woman who haunted her village after dying in childbirth, to more sinister creatures like krasue -- bodyless women who float through the night looking to devour flesh.

Now these ancient tales are being reinvigorated through online platforms like YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp and even delivery app Grab.

"She met a man in a white suit who told her that her time was up, and that she had to go with him," the first caller recounts, her voice quavering.

"But when she turned back, she could see her body lying in bed."

In the studio, host Watcharapol Fukjaidee listens patiently, gently prying out details.

The charismatic 46-year-old, also known by his nickname Jack, films two live episodes a week from 11 pm to dawn, fielding calls from spooked Thais as millions tune in and thousands comment online.

"When there is more technology, the chance to see ghosts increases," he tells AFP.

"Ghosts come with apps, chat lines, phone calls. Technology becomes the channel where they can contact people."

Watcharapol recounted a caller who was contacted by a distant friend, asking him to meet at a temple, but when he got there he made a chilling discovery.

"It turns out that his friend had died and his phone was put into the coffin," he says, raising his eyebrows, a mischievous chuckle lurking.

Ghostly meet-ups


The host got his break 20 years ago under Thailand's "godfather of ghosts" Kapol Thongplub, whose late-night call-in show was a favorite with the capital's taxi drivers.

It is now food delivery riders rather than cabbies who frequently encounter the supernatural as they endlessly crisscross Bangkok at all hours, Watcharapol says.

And unlike Kapol's show, which was dominated by the host's larger-than-life reactions, Watcharapol is more low-key and a little tongue-in-cheek.


"Now with the influence of Twitter and TikTok, more young people call," says Ghost Radio worker Khemjira Jongkolsapapron.

There has been a shift, with audiences now wanting to not only be scared, and then soothed -- but also entertained.

"This isn't a matter of 'still believing' or not," cultural anthropologist Andrew Alan Johnson, whose book "Ghosts of the New City" examines how recent events have reshaped Thai beliefs, told AFP.

"Ghosts become a way to tell stories that are denied elsewhere," he said.

This is especially true in rapidly changing Bangkok, Johnson said, where ghost tales help preserve local memory -- explaining unlucky locations, or feelings of alienation.

"Folk belief is incredibly adaptable, in that it seeks to speak to people's everyday experiences," he said.

The Ghost Radio YouTube channel has almost three million subscribers and is sponsored by various local firms as well as pulling income from the themed cafe on the ground floor.

Watched over by an eclectic collection of ghost-themed toys, Khemjira sifts through scores of submissions, weeding out political stories or anything that might touch the kingdom's tough laws against insulting the monarchy.

Not every tale makes it on air, but Khemjira is confident the people telling them believe them to be true.

"I think people meet ghosts a lot. We hardly ever hear the same story," she says.
'Scared to death'

As Watcharapol listens upstairs, downstairs his cafe is raucous with young fans and families.

Munching on a tombstone-shaped brownie, 25-year-old policeman and regular caller Chalwat Thungood explained how he shares his colleagues' tales.

His own spooky experience came on a call out to a house. As he arrived he glimpsed the shadow of an overweight man walk into a bathroom.

He struggled to open the door -- until suddenly it gave way.

"I found a big man who had been dead for at least five hours. It proved to me that I saw a spirit of the big man walking into the bathroom," he said.

"I 100 percent believe that ghosts exist."

Watcharapol refuses to be drawn on whether he actually believes, stating he has to maintain an open mind before admitting he is "scared to death" of hospital ghosts.

People tune in to his show, he says, to find a like-minded community "because sometimes they can't speak to their family about their ghostly experiences".

Lit up by the multiple screens in his plush studio, Watcharapol says: "No one can prove it is real except the caller."

And then he grins.

© 2023 AFP

Basquiat-Warhol: a rare artistic duo, reunited in Paris

Agence France-Presse
April 03, 2023

Basquiat and Warhol created some 160 paintings together between 1983 and 1985 

© BERTRAND GUAY / AFP

There are vanishingly few great collaborations in the annals of fine art. For a brief moment in the 1980s, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat showed the world how it was done.

It started with a bang. Warhol, 54, met Basquiat, 22, for lunch in October 1982 and took a polaroid of them together.

Basquiat took it to his studio and returned just two hours later with a portrait. Warhol was stunned by its brilliance.

Soon they were working together on portraits that combined their favored tropes: Basquiat's masks, skulls, graffiti and obscure symbols; Warhol's pop-art imagery, logos and newspaper headlines.
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The brief, intense collaboration lasted from 1983 to 1985 and produced some 160 works.

An unprecedented number of them -- 70 -- have been brought together for a show at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris that opens Wednesday, mostly plucked from private collections.

"It's definitely the most successful collaboration in the history of art between two great artists. It's never been matched at this level or in this short space of time," said Dieter Buchhart, the show's lead curator and a Basquiat expert.

In room after room, two different aesthetics, generations and temperaments collide -- and find an unexpected synergy.

"It is neither Warhol, nor Basquiat, but a third artist that emerges," said Suzanne Page, the museum's artistic director.

"There was a great generosity between the two. They played with and provoked each other," she told AFP. "Warhol allowed himself to be completely subverted by Basquiat's interventions."

At their best, it is hard to tell where one artist begins and the other ends, as in the monumental, 10-meter-long (33 feet) "African Masks".

Others are unexpected: "Ten Punching Bags", never shown in their lifetimes, has the bags suspended in a line and decorated with the face of Jesus Christ inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper", drawn by Warhol with the word "judge" and a crown of thorns added by Basquiat.

Cartoonist Keith Haring, a close friend of both -- and who makes a cameo in the exhibition -- praised their collaboration at the time as a "conversation in painting".

But there were doubters as well. Many felt portraits should be the singular vision of an individual artist.

Their supporters saw the two artists more like great jazz musicians, riffing off each other. Basquiat was inspired by the master, Warhol was reinvigorated by his young friend.

"It released an incredible energy," said Page, and on a more straightforward level, they shared an intuitive genius for composition and combining colors.

If Basquiat was the more serious, the more socially engaged -- "carried by anger" at the invisibility of black people -- Warhol was not as detached as he sometimes came across.

"He accepted the social engagement side of Basquiat, and shared it," Page said. "Warhol was engaged too, in his own way. He was a very complex creature."

What might have been seen as insolence in Basquiat's approach -- scrawling over works that Warhol had left around his Factory studio, for example -- was totally accepted by the elder artist.

Their collaboration ended happily. But within two years both were dead -- Warhol following routine surgery and Basquiat from a heroin overdose. Already global superstars, their fame would only continue to grow.

© 2023 AFP

Picasso: king of the $100 million club

Agence France-Presse
April 04, 2023

Pablo Picasso is the world's biggest-selling artist at auction, holding several records for sales of his works © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP/File

Pablo Picasso, who died 50 years ago this week, remains the star of art auctions, with several of his works commanding record sums.

Five works by the Spanish artist have been sold for more than $100 million (93 million euros), 16 for more than $50 million, and 39 for more than $30 million, according to AFP's count.

Most expensive: $179.4 million

"The Women of Algiers (Version O)", painted in 1955, is the most expensive work by Picasso ever sold at auction, going for $179.4 million on May 11, 2015, fivefold what the seller had paid 18 years earlier.

At the time it was the biggest art auction sale in history.

It was dethroned in November 2017 by the sale of "Salvator Mundi" attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which went under the hammer for $450 million and holds the record to this day.
Previous record-holders

In the last 20 years, two other Picasso works have held the record for the biggest art auction sale: "Boy with a Pipe", from May 2004 to February 2010, and "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" from May 2010 to May 2012, according to an AFP database.
$4.7 billion in a decade

With sales of Picasso works adding up to $4.7 billion over the past 10 years, according to Artprice's annual reports, no other artist can touch his totals.

Andy Warhol ($3.4 billion) and Claude Monet ($2.6 billion) lag well behind the King of Cubism.

3,000 pieces sold annually

Picasso was not only a painter, his oeuvre also includes sculptures, drawings, ceramics, engravings, lithographs, illustrated books and ballet costumes.

These have appeared in 31,745 auctions in 10 years -- an average of more than 3,000 objects up for sale every year.

© 2023 AFP

Sabertooth cat skull newly discovered in Iowa reveals details about this Ice Age predator

The Conversation
April 03, 2023

Sabertooth cat (Shutterstock)

The sabertooth cat is an Ice Age icon and emblem of strength, tenacity and intelligence. These animals shared the North American landscape with other large carnivores, including short-faced bears, dire wolves and the American lion, as well as megaherbivores including mammoths, mastodons, muskoxen and long-horned bison. Then at the end of the Pleistocene, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, they all vanished. The only place to see them now is in the fossil record.

Carnivore fossils are extremely rare, though, in comparison to those of their prey. Prey are always more abundant than predators in a healthy ecosystem. So the probability of burial, storage and discovery of carnivore bones and teeth is therefore slim compared to those belonging to herbivores.

Scientists have a relatively small and scattered inventory of sabertooth fossils. The exception comes from Rancho La Brea in downtown Los Angeles, where over 1,000 individual sabertooths were mired in tar-seep death traps.

That’s why the recent discovery of an exquisite sabertooth cat skull in southwestern Iowa is so exciting. The Smilodon fatalis skull was collected from late Pleistocene sand and gravel exposed along the East Nishnabotna River. My colleague, biologist David A. Easterla, and I are studying this specimen to learn more about the life history, prey selection and eventual extinction of this ancient predator.




The recent sabertooth find is a complete cranium, albeit missing one of its namesake sabers. Chris Gannon, ISU News Service

The animal’s common name – sabertooth cat – comes from its highly distinctive, saberlike canine teeth that poke out of the mouth as much as 5 or 6 inches (13 to 15 centimeters).

Sabertooths are sexually dimorphic, with males generally larger than females. The Iowa skull is larger than those of many adult males from Rancho La Brea. Several bones of the skull have not sealed together and the teeth are basically unworn, leading us to believe this individual was almost certainly a young male between 2 and 3 years old that was still growing.

We estimate he weighed 550 pounds (250 kilograms). That’s upwards of 110 pounds (50 kilograms) greater than the average adult male African lion. Given a few years to mature and fill up loose skin, he might have tipped the scale at 650 pounds (300 kilograms).


Observations of the life cycles of modern lions and tigers suggest this sabertooth was newly independent or on the cusp of independent living.


Sabertooths might have lived and hunted together in groups like modern lions – but all other modern cats live more solitary lifestyles. jez_bennett/iStock via Getty Images Plus

However, whether sabertooths stuck together in groups or were loners is hotly debated. Disagreement revolves around just how much of a size difference there is between males and females. In many living animals, males are typically larger than females in male-dominated harems, as in modern lions. In the case of sabertooths, some scholars identify this pronounced sexual dimophisim between the sexes and contend these ancient cats lived in groups, akin to today’s lions. Other researchers see only minimal size differences and view sabertooth cats generally as solitary predators, perhaps more like tigers and all other felines.

Whatever the case, at 2 or 3 years old the cat obviously possessed the weaponry – jaws and paws – and heft to take down large prey alone. He likely garnered experience hunting by first watching his mother locate, stalk, ambush and kill prey and defend the carcasses, then perhaps with her help, and finally, alone. His learning curve was probably a lot like lions and tigers as they mature physically and behaviorally.

Hunting for survival is high stakes. Repeated failure means death from starvation. And attacking large prey equipped with defensive gear like horns, antlers, hooves and trunks is always dangerous and sometimes lethal. For instance, a recent study of 166 modern lion skulls from Zambia revealed that 68 had healed or partially healed injuries associated with taking down prey. Put another way, 40% had survived major head trauma to hunt another day.




One of this cat’s distinctive sabers was broken off before it died. Chris Gannon, ISU News Service

One saber in the Iowa skull is broken off where the canine tooth emerges from the roof of the mouth. Morphological details of the fracture edges indicate the damage happened around this animal’s time of death. It’s possible the break may relate to a defense wound thanks to a prey animal’s well-placed hoof, antler, horn or swat. Since the stub is not worn, the encounter may have even caused the cat’s death.

Additional technical analysis yields more info

A technique called stable isotope analysis allows researchers to figure out what an animal ate and even where it lived based on ratios of isotopes in its teeth or bones.

Andrew Somerville, a specialist in isotopic biogeochemistry, is leading this effort with the Iowa sabertooth. Our team suspects that sabertooth cats in this area would have focused their hunting on the Jefferson’s ground sloth, a massive, lumbering and solitary browser. With adults weighing around a ton, its size was probably a major deterrent to other predators – but not necessarily to sabertooths. Sharp sabers to the neck could have killed the sloth, size be damned.

My colleagues and I are also developing what natural science researchers call diet-breadth mixing models. Using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen preserved in Ice Age carnivore, herbivore and omnivore bones from southwest Iowa, our models should tell us if sabertooths, short-faced bears and dire wolves competed for the same prey, the habitats they searched for prey and, possibly, how these food-web connections collapsed at the end of the Ice Age.

Radiocarbon dating indicates this Iowa sabertooth lived between 13,605 and 13,455 years ago, making it among the last of its kind to walk the Western Hemisphere. Slightly younger dates – but not by much – come from Rancho La Brea, eastern Brazil and far southern Chile.

These dates mean sabertooths and the first people to infiltrate these places – Clovis foragers in North America and Fishtail foragers in South America – shared the landscape for a short period of time. People probably chanced upon sabertooth tracks, scat and kills now and again. Maybe a few lucky people observed the magnificent animal going about its life. But neither knew what the future had in store.

The big cat vanished from both continents shortly after people arrived. The ultimate cause of the die-off is difficult to pinpoint, and multiple factors were certainly at play. However, at least with sabertooths, we can say extinction was a hemisphere-wide synchronous event that transpired in a geological instant, perhaps over just 1,000 or 2,000 years, which makes it difficult to directly or indirectly tie people to the die-off.

The Iowa skull, combined with other fossil evidence from the region and observations of modern large carnivores, has cast new light on the life history and behavior of sabertooth cats. Ongoing research promises to provide additional clues about the diet and ecology of this iconic predator.

Matthew G. Hill, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Iowa State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Austria glaciers retreat 'more than ever': measurement

Agence France-Presse
March 31, 2023

Austria's Jamtal glacier © KERSTIN JOENSSON / AFP

Austrian glaciers last year retreated "more than ever", the country's Alpine Club said Friday, as climate change threatens glaciers around the globe.

On average, 89 Austrian glaciers observed by the organisation have become 28.7 metres (94.2 feet) shorter, compared to 11 metres in 2021, it said in a statement, sounding a "red alert".

"Never before in the history of the Alpine Club's glacier measurement service, which dates back to 1891, has there been a greater loss of glaciers," it said.

"The drastic glacier retreat undoubtedly makes the consequences of the anthropogenic massively intensified climate change clear," it added, warning that glaciers in Austria would disappear at the latest in 2075.

It urged the better protection of glaciers in the ski-mad Alpine nation.

"The touristic development of glacier areas is simply no longer justifiable at a time when the climate crisis is already having an enormous impact on the glaciers," it said.

Half of the Earth's 215,000 glaciers and a quarter of their mass will melt away by the end of the century, according to a study published in the journal Science in January.

This will happen even if global warming can be capped at 1.5-degrees Celsius, the ambitious Paris Agreement target that many scientists now say is beyond reach, the study said.

Global mean temperature is currently estimated to be increasing by 2.7-degrees Celsius which would result in a near-complete loss of glaciers in Central Europe, Western Canada and the continental United States and New Zealand.

Migrants cried for help in Mexico fire but no one came, survivor recalls



By Lizbeth Diaz

Reuters
April 03, 2023

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO

 (Reuters) -Eduard Caraballo screamed for help.

Thick suffocating smoke was filling the cell where he was held with over 60 other migrants in northern Mexico, but there was no way out. The single door was locked shut.

"We screamed for them to open the cell door, but no one helped us," Caraballo, 26, said through tears during a phone interview from his hospital bed.

One by one people began to die, he said.

In total, 40 people were killed in the fire last Monday in one of the deadliest migrant tragedies in years.

Mexican prosecutors say they are investigating the fire as a possible homicide and arrested five people last week in connection with the incident. The probe is focusing on why the male migrants held at the center appeared to be left in their cell while the fire burned, while women detainees were safely evacuated from a neighboring cell.

Officials blamed the fire on a migrant who allegedly set mattresses alight to protest their imminent deportation.

A short video circulating on social media - appearing to be security footage from inside the center during the blaze - showed men kicking on the bars of a locked door as their cell filled with smoke.

Three uniformed people can be seen walking past without trying to open the door. Investigators have said the video is part of the probe.

Mexico's National Migration Institute, which ran the center in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Caraballo's account.

Caraballo, a Venezuelan migrant, said he survived by soaking his sweater in water, covering his face, and moving to the bathroom at the back of the cell.

As the fire started, all the lights went out, he recalled.

"When I saw everything begin to fill with smoke, I worried a lot about my family," he said. "My God, don't let me die."

The last thing he remembers were desperate screams, and how, using a "heavy object" someone finally bashed open the door of the cell.

"They pulled me by the hand, I think it was a firefighter, and they helped me out, others were already dead," he said, crying.

Caraballo was transferred on Saturday to a hospital in El Paso after he and his family received humanitarian parole to enter the United States. He is still on oxygen and being treated for smoke exposure.

He is anxious to get better so he can be fully reunited with his family and start a new life in the United States.

Like millions of others, Caraballo and his family fled Venezuela's economic and political crisis, setting off for the United States last October.

The young father was the first to be able to cross into the United States, via the government's CBP One scheme which allows some migrants to formally enter the United States, but returned to Mexico in February after his infant daughter fell ill.

He never imagined it might cost him his life.

Caraballo was detained around midday last Monday and locked in the cell. As the fire broke out his wife was waiting outside, expecting him to be released.

"I could hear my wife's screams from the ambulance they loaded me into, then I lost consciousness," he said. "It was hell."

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Aurora Ellis)

Migrants treated 'like criminals' in Mexican immigration centers

Agence France-Presse
April 01, 2023

The immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez near the US border where 39 migrants died in a fire(AFP)

Luisa Jimenez thought she was visiting an office to regularize her stay in Mexico, but instead she found herself detained in an immigration center similar to the one where dozens of migrants perished in a fire.

"It's a holding cell, a detention center, like we're criminals," the Venezuelan migrant told AFP in Ciudad Juarez, where 39 people died and 27 were injured in the blaze that began on Monday.

Jimenez said the facility where she was held was in Tuxtla Gutierrez in the southern state of Chiapas.

She was taken there with the promise that she would be given a permit to remain in Mexico while seeking asylum in the United States.
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Jimenez was actually notified that she had to leave the country, she added.

"It's a disgusting place," the 56-year-old woman said, describing conditions similar to those in Ciudad Juarez.

The tragedy there unfolded after a migrant lit a fire in apparent protest over deportations, according to authorities, who have accused immigration officials and guards of failing to even try to evacuate the migrants.

Arrest warrants have been issued against three officials, two private guards and a migrant who allegedly started the fire, as part of a homicide investigation.

Just a week earlier, Moises Chavez was held in the same cell, which he described as a smelly room where guards treat migrants with disdain.

"There are no fire extinguishers or smoke detectors, but there are cameras," the 41-year-old Nicaraguan told AFP.

It was the second time that Chavez had been taken to the National Institute of Migration facility, where the fire claimed the lives of 18 Guatemalans, seven Salvadorans, seven Venezuelans, six Hondurans and one Colombian.Harsh conditions -

Video surveillance footage appeared to show guards leaving the 68 detainees locked inside as flames spread and smoke filled the room.

Ostensibly, such facilities are service and accommodation centers for foreigners who cannot prove their legal stay in Mexico.

In reality "you're treated like a prisoner," said Yusleidy Garcia from Venezuela, who was detained in Ciudad Juarez, where women and men are held in separate places.

"It was cold at night. They take away all your belongings. In the cell where I was there were 150 people" of various nationalities, she said.

Such conditions are in sharp contrast with rules issued by the government in 2012 requiring adequate food, hygiene protocols and protection of people and property in the event of riots.

Migrants are not supposed to remain in temporary-stay centers like the one that caught fire for more than seven days.

Some are transferred to other immigration facilities -- where the stay must not exceed 15 days -- to resolve their situation and receive legal assistance, and may be deported.
'Not shelters' -

Mexican immigration last year detained at least 281,149 people in "overcrowded" centers and deported at least 98,299 people, including unaccompanied children, Amnesty International said this week in an annual human rights report.

Following Monday's fire, the rights group called for "an end to the practices that have caused untold damage, including torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, to thousands of migrants who have passed through these centers."

"These facilities are not 'shelters,' but detention centers, and people are not 'housed' there, but deprived of their freedom," Amnesty said, alluding to statements by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The United Nations office in Mexico noted that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration -- an intergovernmentally negotiated agreement -- outlaws arbitrary detentions and calls for legal detentions to be as short as possible.

Other international standards advocate alternatives to arrest, the UN said.

Jimenez's detention lasted for two days, following a long and dangerous journey during which she said she slept next to the bodies of migrants who died in the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.

Outraged at being locked up when she was only trying to regularize her status, she recounted asking an immigration official: "Is it a crime to migrate?"

"She turned her back on me and left," Jimenez said.


© Agence France-Presse