Marine mammal experts with NOAA Fisheries and the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network are monitoring the position of a dead gray whale in Turnagain Arm near Anchorage, Alaska, hoping for an opportunity to conduct a necropsy (animal autopsy). The latest reported location of the carcass is a couple hundred yards offshore from the Placer and Twentymile rivers. At […]
Polar bears likely survived past warm periods in the Arctic, when sea ice cover was low, by scavenging on the carcasses of stranded large whales. This food source sustained the bears when they were largely restricted to land, unable to roam the ice in search of seals to hunt. A new study led by the University of […]
The death toll from the earthquake-tsunami disaster in Indonesia has more than doubled, rising to 832, with 540 injured people, according to Indonesian officials. Authorities have said they expect the death toll to rise. “The casualties will keep increasing,” said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, whose agency announced the jump in the toll […]
Aretha Franklin, the American singer known to millions of fans around the world as the “Queen of Soul,” has died at the age of 76. Franklin passed away Thursday in her hometown of Detroit, where she had been under hospice care after a long battle with cancer. Born March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, Franklin […]