All posts tagged: millions

Great White Sharks Have Been in the Mediterranean Sea for Millions of Years—but Sightings Are Incredibly Rare

Great White Sharks Have Been in the Mediterranean Sea for Millions of Years—but Sightings Are Incredibly Rare

Published by skeptic

An encounter with a great white shark is undoubtedly a “thrilling” experience, considered especially rare in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The latest sighting, which has attracted media attention and made headlines around the world, occurred during a dive in the Strait of Sicily carried out by volunteers from Ghost Diving and Healthy Seas, organizations dedicated to protecting marine ecosystems. The encounter was documented by diver Derk Remmers, who told the BBC that he struggled to switch on his camera because of the excitement. The footage—the first ever recorded of a great white shark in its Mediterranean Sea habitat—shows a huge adult male specimen of Carcharodon carcharias, a native species that is now considered critically endangered. The Great White Shark Carcharodon carcharias, commonly known as the great white shark, belongs to the Lamnidae family and is one of the largest predatory fish in existence. It can exceed 6 meters (20 feet) in length and weigh more than 2 tons. It feeds primarily on fish, including rays and other sharks, though adult individuals may also …

Dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid impact site stayed hot for millions of years

Dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid impact site stayed hot for millions of years

Published by skeptic

Illustration of the Chicxulub asteroid impact, which took place 66 million years ago MARK GARLICK/Science Photo Library/Getty Images The asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs hit with such force that it took at least 8 million years for the impact site to cool down, creating a warm underground ecosystem where microscopic life thrived. The Chicxulub asteroid, which collided with Earth 66 million years ago at what is now Mexico, is thought to have been as large as 15 kilometres in diameter. The strike caused so much climate chaos that it wiped out three-quarters of species on Earth. All the dinosaurs except the ancestors of birds became extinct and a nuclear winter gripped the planet for at least 15 years. Its effects were also felt deep underground. “The Chicxulub impact was big enough to cause deformation at least 35 kilometres under the surface of the Earth, detectable using geophysical surveys,” says Annemarie Pickersgill at the University of Glasgow, UK. The impact melted about 10,000 cubic kilometres of rock, she says. The combination of melted rock …

Trump’s Troop Reversals in Europe Could Cost Millions and Have Left Soldiers in Limbo, Officials Say

Trump’s Troop Reversals in Europe Could Cost Millions and Have Left Soldiers in Limbo, Officials Say

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military is waiting for clarity from the Pentagon following President Donald Trump’s back-and-forth on troop levels in Europe, upending the lives of military personnel and potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars, two U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press. The Republican president announced on social media two weeks ago that he was sending troops to Poland — the same day the Pentagon had officially ordered the cancellation of a rotation of soldiers heading there, one of the defense officials said. The unit’s equipment was already on the way. Sending it cost the military $32 million, said U.S. Transportation Command, the military agency largely responsible for moving troops and gear across the globe. The abrupt changes are forcing the military to “retroactively engineer” a policy in line with the president’s latest pronouncement, the official said. Both officials were briefed on the decisions and, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The uncertainty is not only rattling European allies worried about the message being sent …

63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, More than 1 million scam-related online accounts were taken down, and millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency were frozen, as part of a crackdown on Southeast Asian scam networks. Scam center workers, many of whom were trafficked and forced to work for criminals, are guarded by Karen Border Guard troops in Myawaddy, Burma, on Feb. 26, 2025. Stringer/Reuters The crackdown operations, conducted by U.S. and international agencies led by the Department of Justice (DOJ), began on May 18, when the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force brought together the FBI, Royal Thai Police, and law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand to identify and disrupt criminal scam networks. Meta, Microsoft, Starlink, and Coinbase were part of joint operations held in Washington and Bangkok, Meta said in a June 3 statement. “More than a million online assets were disrupted as a result of the operation – including 1.4 million accounts, pages, and groups across Facebook and Instagram, 20,000 Microsoft accounts, and thousands of Starlink …

Trump delivers boost to coal worth hundreds of millions, including wartime authority funds

Trump delivers boost to coal worth hundreds of millions, including wartime authority funds

Published by Sam Flores

The Trump administration is putting hundreds of millions of federal dollars toward coal, one of the president’s favorite energy sources. President Trump announced the move during Thursday remarks in the Oval Office, saying his administration is “taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with… Source link

Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones

Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones

Published by skeptic

Meta has quietly embedded face-recognition technology for its smart glasses into an app downloaded to millions of phones, according to a WIRED analysis of the company’s software. Code discreetly added to Meta’s AI app over multiple updates this year shows that the feature, internally called “NameTag,” identifies people captured by the glasses’ camera and, when activated, alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone. The discovery of NameTag in the live Meta AI app shows that Meta had begun shipping face-recognition code to users’ phones while publicly describing it as something the company was still “thinking through.” In April, Meta said if it were to utilize face recognition, it wouldn’t be rolled out without first taking “a very thoughtful approach.” But WIRED found that as early as January, core components of the system had been integrated into software distributed to millions of people. Though not yet enabled, NameTag sits inside a Meta AI companion app that’s been downloaded over 50 million times and is necessary for use of key features of its smart glasses, including Ray-Ban …

Trump Directs Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to Support Coal Using Emergency Powers

Trump Directs Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to Support Coal Using Emergency Powers

Published by Sam Flores

By Timothy Gardner and Jarrett Renshaw WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump ⁠said ⁠on Thursday he is directing hundreds ⁠of millions of dollars to support U.S. coal power plants and to ship the ​carbon-intensive fuel to Asia, with most of the funding coming from Cold War-era emergency powers. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a 1950 ‌law granting presidents broad authority over ‌industries deemed critical to national security, to fund $425 million in upgrades to 13 coal-fired power plants and $75 million to support ⁠the proposed West ⁠Gateway coal export terminal in Oakland, California. His Energy Department also said it was finalizing ​up to $350 million in previously announced funding to help develop four coal facility projects, including new power plants in Alaska and West Virginia.  The Trump administration has framed energy policy as a national security issue to ensure electricity for AI data centers and reduce reliance ​on other countries. At an event in the Oval Office, Trump, flanked by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris ⁠Wright, ⁠and Republican governors Mark …

Childhood Flu Shots Prevent Millions of Cases, Study Finds

Childhood Flu Shots Prevent Millions of Cases, Study Finds

Published by Sam Flores

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTUESDAY, June 2, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Pediatric flu vaccines significantly reduce cases of influenza among children, a new study finds. For every 100 children vaccinated, as many as 14 fewer children come down with the flu, researchers reported June 1 in JAMA Pediatrics. “In the United States, that’s hundreds of thousands, if not a million cases of flu that we can avoid each year,” senior researcher Dr. Anupam Jena said in a news release. He’s a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “That’s a huge effect size,” he said. The results come during an ongoing assault by the Trump administration on the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule. In January, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed the annual influenza vaccine from its childhood schedule of recommended vaccines, researchers noted. That change was met with widespread condemnation from medical societies and public health organizations, and it has been blocked for now by a U.S. District Court. “The federal government cited an absence of evidence …

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Published by skeptic

A morning walk through East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York, uncovered an immense colony of some 5.5 million subterranean bees. The discovery, which a Cornell University research team published in April in the journal Apidologie, documents one of the largest aggregations of these insects ever recorded. The population, belonging to the species Andrena regularis, occupies an area of about 1.25 acres and is crucial for pollination of the region’s orchards, demonstrating that historic cemeteries can prove unsuspected refuges for urban biodiversity. The Genesis of the Discovery In the spring of 2022, Rachel Fordyce, then a laboratory technician in Cornell University’s entomology department, noticed an anomalous presence of insects during her usual walk to work. After collecting some specimens, she showed them to Bryan Danforth, an entomologist at the same university. Analysis revealed that they were Andrena regularis, commonly called the mining or miner bee. Unlike honey bees, this wild species has a solitary lifestyle and nests by digging tunnels in the ground. Historical records indicate that the insect has been present in the cemetery, …