https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/23/weather-temperature-changes-illness/
Gift link: https://wapo.st/3lZBTFw

Temperature fluctuations bewilder plants and animals and can exacerbate human health problems, especially among those with existing medical conditions

Lily Pien, an allergist at the Cleveland Clinic, drove to work earlier this week in snow and hail. The next day it was 65 degrees and sunny.

This weather whiplash had her bracing for an influx of patients seeking relief for their suddenly suffering noses. “My schedule is filled up,” she said. “As the weather changes, so does my patient load and their nasal symptoms.”

Many parts of the United States have seen wild weather swings and unseasonable conditions in recent days. The West is shivering in record cold, while the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic are experiencing unusual heat for February, including a pattern of springlike days on top of cold snaps — and vice versa.

One D.C. radio announcer Wednesday morning forecast a “record high” 80 degrees for Thursday, then warned: “Bundle up on Friday.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/23/wagner-mercenaries-captives-war-ukraine/
Gift Link: https://wapo.st/3Ky3tDT



DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The two men lay on the dirty tile floor of an empty office, still in their bloodied combat fatigues and bandages. One dozed without a pillow under a blanket; the other stretched out with a tourniquet strapped above the knee of his blood-soaked pants.

The men were two of three Russian fighters with the Wagner mercenary group who had been captured a few hours earlier in a northern section of the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to a Ukrainian officer with a sidearm on his hip, who was the only other person present. The third, more seriously injured, had been taken to a hospital, the officer said.

...



Prigozhin told the prisoners that he came with President Vladimir Putin’s offer to “wipe the slate clean” of criminal convictions for anyone signing up to fight.

Mikhail also heard Prigozhin promise that anyone who ran away from the front would immediately “go to zero,” the Wagner term for assassinating its own men. Within 10 days, he was on a flight to western Russia, far from his wife and four children in the East, and by November he was in occupied eastern Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/18/python-study-gps-collar-florida/

Gift Link: https://wapo.st/3IAcJWE



After nearly five months of waiting, an alarm activated on Michael Cove’s radio, a sign his study was working.

To hunt pythons, an invasive predator in the Florida Keys, Cove and fellow researchers have been strapping GPS collars to opossums and raccoons. When one was eaten by a python in September, researchers programmed the device to notify them from within the snake’s stomach.

After roughly six weeks of searching for the python that activated the alarm, research technicians located the 66-pound snake hiding underground. They needed about six hours to yank her out of the ground before they euthanized her. In her stomach, researchers discovered the collar — confirmation their plan worked.

Cove told The Washington Post that he hopes the experiment, which is ongoing in Key Largo thanks to a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will protect endangered species and preserve ecosystems.

“There’s not really many things restricting [pythons’] population expansion,” said Cove, a research curator at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “I’m still cautiously optimistic that if we can remove a bunch of these big females before they’re reproducing, that we could manage this invasive predator.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/angie-craig-threatening-calls/index.html



CNN
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Rep. Angie Craig’s office released audio Friday of threatening, vulgar phone calls it said it received after the Minnesota Democrat was physically assaulted in her apartment building in Washington, DC, earlier this month.

One of the callers said, “Finally this piece of sh*t gets accosted. … You deserved it.”

Another caller said, “I hope it happens to you again, because you deserve it. And don’t call the police for help.”

Craig’s office said the disturbing calls and threats came after a segment on Fox News’ “The Five” addressed her attack by a man in her apartment building’s elevator six days earlier. In the segment, the hosts bashed previous efforts by some Democrats to “defund the police”.

“Fox News’ ‘The Five’ launched a new round of false attacks on Rep. Craig’s record during their Wednesday afternoon show, working from opposition research released earlier in the day by the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee),” her office said in a news release.

CNN has reached out to Fox News and the NRCC for comment.

“Now that the congresswoman has been victimized, now she feels your pain? Nonsense,” Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said on the segment. “And for those who say ‘at least now she’s on our side.’ Baloney.”

“You’ve done your damage, stick with it,” Pirro added. “Defund the police as it relates to you.”