An animal-rights group is demanding a rare seahorse captured by a 9-year-old boy be released back into the wild, after the youth donated it to a local aquarium.The lad recently caught the rare short-snouted seahorse (hippocampus hippocampus) while playing with his landing net on the shore of Borkum Island on the North Sea coast of Germany. The schoolboy, identified only by his first name Aike, told his parents about the catch, and they decided to donate it to the nearby Borkum Nordsee (North Sea) Aquarium. The aquarium was thrilled with that decision. “We haven’t seen a seahorse like this…
Author: zenger.news
The last Spaniard to survive being placed in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II has died aged 101. Juan Romero was the last surviving member of a group of about 9,300 Spaniards who fought against that country’s then-dictator, Francisco Franco, and were later placed in Nazi concentration camps. Romero was injured in a battle in during the Spanish Civil War and made his way to France after recovering from his injury in 1939. There, he joined the French Foreign Legion to fight the Nazis but was captured in 1941. He was placed in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in…
A married father of four’s first day at a new job in Turkey ended in tragedy after a freak accident took his life. Nail Polat, 47, arrived for his first shift at a new grocery store on Wednesday in the Turkish city of Adana. He delivered a trolley full of goods to a man named Murat Akkol, who lived on the ninth-floor of an apartment building, according to national newspaper Ensonhaber. After delivering the order, Polat stepped backwards into the building’s elevator. But the lift was still on a higher floor — and Polat fell into the empty elevator shaft.…
The reference weight of an Indian man and woman is now up by 5 kilograms (11 pounds). Moving away from the decade-old reference ranges, experts from the National Institute of Nutrition have pushed the reference weight of an Indian man to 65 kg from 60 kg and a woman to 55 kg from the earlier 50 kg. Clinical nutritionist Dr. Nupur Krishnan, director of Bio-Logics Nutrition Clinic in Mumbai said that increasing the reference weight by 5 kg was a good idea. “The reference weight is crucial in assessment and analysis for customized therapies,” said Krishnan. “We use the reference weight…
The rate of human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka has increased exponentially in recent years., with environmental experts blaming human encroachment on pachyderm habitats. Deforestation of protected areas for agriculture and commercial development is rampant. As a result, elephants deprived of their natural habitat venture into human settlements.. “The highest number of human-elephant conflicts since 1948 was recorded in 2019, with 405 elephants and 121 humans reported dead,” said Sajeewa Chamikara, a member of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform, a nongovernment organization. He said that depletion of elephants’ natural habitats is a major cause of the deaths. “Grasslands have…
A suckermouth catfish, native to South America’s Amazon River, was found in the Ganga River at Ramnagar, Varanasi district, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, by fishermen on Sept. 26. It is the second time that fish species was spotted there in September. Researchers at Banaras Hindu University examined the full-grown live fish and confirmed it to be Hypostomus plecostomus, found in the Amazon. “Though we cannot confirm how the fish ended up in the Ganga, we believe aquarists would have let this into the water body,” said Bechan Lal, a zoology professor at Banaras Hindu University…
MCP Linz, an Indian cargo ship operated by the Shipping Corporation of India, has completed its maiden journey from Thoothukudi in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to Malé, the capital of the Maldives. The voyage initiated direct cargo ferry service between the two nations, a new phase in connectivity in the southern Indian Ocean. “Direct connectivity helps a great deal, especially because the Maldives heavily depends on the imported goods and food,” Imthiyaz Fahmy, spokesperson for the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party, said. “The connectivity will certainly boost bilateral trade and increase economic activity.” Despite a lockdown in the…
After the Covid-19 pandemic closed Kenya’s schools in March, Aden Jamal and his brother Abdullah Ahmed were excited to be home with their parents. They couldn’t have known a family friend, Juma Karim, had other plans for them. The brothers, each age 16, live with their parents at Eastleigh, a Somali enclave in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi many refer to as “Little Mogadishu” that has become fertile recruitment grounds for al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate waging holy war in East Africa. The two were at home playing video games while their mother was at the market, when Karim approached them about…
Two Nobel Prize-winning economists say France needs to go back into lockdown to “save Christmas.” Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019, predict a spike in coronavirus deaths after Christmas if France does not enact a new lockdown for the first two-thirds of December. The economists, both of whom are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recommended implementing a nationwide lockdown before letting people reunite with their families for the holiday in a Saturday op-ed for French newspaper Le Monde. “It is necessary to decree confinement from 1st to…
Gina Zevallos uprooted her life two years ago, as a new graduate, to settle in the French city of Angers. Her decision to return home hangs in the balance, as the 2020 U.S. presidential election nears and President Donald Trump seeks re-election. As an undergraduate in California in 2016, Zevallos worked for a law firm that helped foreign women navigate the residency process in the United States. “Months after Trump was elected, our entire project, which worked to stop violence against women, was shelved. That was a clear indicator of the life that awaited American citizens under the Trump presidency,”…