An albatross, believed to be 64-years-old, returns to nest for her 37th chick

Her name is Wisdom and she is an albatross who is believed to be 64-years-old. She is a Laysan albatross and was sighted near Hawaii on the remote island Midway Atoll on 19 November with her mate. She has already raised 36 chicks and is nesting for her 37th.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 26 November 2015.

She had been tagged in 1956 as she incubated an egg and, at the time, she was thought to be around five years old.
AS informed by Dan Clark, manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial, the albatross Wisdom had returned almost a year to the day after she reared her last chick. He has added that in the face of dramatic seabird population decreases worldwide (a 70% drop since the 1950s when Wisdom was first branded), this bird has become a symbol of hope and inspiration.
They lay only one egg per year and, a breeding albatross and their mate will spend approximately six months rearing and feeding their young.
In her lifetime, Wisdom is thought to have flown more than six million miles as she foraged for food, including squid, fish, crustaceans and flying fish eggs.

Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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Six persons to become guinea pigs and imitate Martian life in Hawaii for a year

It’s a strange mix of six people drawn from different professions who will be guinea pigs to imitate life on Mars. They are a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans - a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil scientist. They would stay in a specially constructed dome built by NASA in remote Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The dome is on a barren, northern slope of the volcano and they would live inside a dome that would be 11m across and 6m tall.
This has been reported in nzherald.co.nz dated 30 September 2015.

They have already shut themselves inside the dome and will be there for a year. It would be the longest US isolation experiment aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars.
The participants have their own small rooms, with space for a cot and desk, and will spend their days eating foods like powdered cheese and canned tuna. When they go out of the dome, they would be dressed in a spacesuit, and would have limited access to the internet.
As one of the crew member Sheyna Gifford has said - the team is "six people who want to change the world by making it possible for people to leave it at will."
They have to spend their time in a cramped space with no access to fresh air, food, or privacy and, conflicts are certain to occur. The study would be to observe how these scenarios play out on Earth before pressing on to Mars. The target is in the 2030s.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)


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Black-white divide takes an ugly turn – black man kills two non-black police officers in New York

#NYPDOfficers #Brooklyn #blacklivesmatter A black gunman 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley has shot two NYPD Officers in Brooklyn – the two officers are Liu Wenjin and Raphael Ramos. They were Asian and Hispanic respectively. The officers were killed while they were on patrol in Brooklyn and the NYPD police chief has said that they were "targeted for their uniform".
Before shooting them, the gunman had indicated on social media that he planned to kill police in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner, a black man who died when white officers tried to arrest him for selling cigarettes in New York and Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri.
The grand jury did not indict any of the two police officers involved in the killings and Ismaaiyl Brinsley decided to carry out revenge killings.
After killing the officers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area, the gunman ran into a subway station where he shot himself. US President Barack Obama, who is currently on holiday in Hawaii, has strongly condemned the killings of the two NYPD officers.
As per reports it seems Brinsley approached the passenger window of a marked police car and opened fire, striking the Officers in the head. The officers were on special patrol doing crime reduction work in the area of Brooklyn. Incidentally, Brinsley had a history of arrests in Georgia for robbery, disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon and his last-known address was in Georgia, but he had some sort of ties to Brooklyn.

US West Coast in the grip of Pineapple Express storm

Life has gone haywire in the west coast of the US as the Pineapple Storm strikes the drought parched weest coast region. The Pineapple Express originates in Hawaii and runs to the Pacific coast.
The storm has triggered power outages, flight delays and commuter chaos. Reports indicate suffering of tens of thousands of households with power cuts as uprooted and toppled trees have wreaked traffic gridlock.
Ferry services near San Francisco have been cancelled and flights arriving at the city's main airport were facing delays. Forecasts are that the storm could be one of the strongest in five years, with wind gusts of up to 80mph.
Residents have collected sandbags and crews have cleared storm drains while schools in San Francisco have cancelled classes for the first time since 9/11. The authorities have also issued flood warnings, high surf and wind advisories and have expressed fears that the heavy showers could result in mudslides in the wildfire-scarred foothills across the state.
Of course, the rains will be welcomed by the farmers who have been struggling to keep crops alive in parched fields during successive years of below-normal rainfall.