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Mint
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
US Independence Day 2025: How to watch Macy's fireworks in New York? Start time, best viewing spots and other details
The 49th edition of the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks for US Independence Day is set to illuminate New York City's skyline on Friday (July 4), with a spectacle launched from the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and four surrounding barges on the East River. This year's display will feature more than 80,000 shells erupting in 30 different colors and dozens of dazzling effects, including crackling crown jellyfish, atomic rings, and comet fans, reaching heights of up to 1,000 feet. The show will also incorporate state-of-the-art projection mapping on the Brooklyn Bridge itself. Free public viewing & security measures Spectators can enjoy the fireworks from any area with an unobstructed view of the lower East River. Prime public viewing zones will be set up along elevated portions of the FDR Drive, with access points at: Montgomery Street at Madison Street Robert F. Wagner Sr. Place Broad Street at Water Street ADA-accessible viewing will be available at the Murry Bergtraum Softball Field. For security reasons, alcohol, backpacks, lawn chairs, large bags, coolers, umbrellas, drones, cigarettes, and weapons are prohibited. All attendees are subject to NYPD screening. The televised broadcast will begin at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and stream live on Peacock, with the fireworks expected to ignite around 9:45 p.m. and last for approximately 30 minutes. The evening will include performances by Lenny Kravitz, the Jonas Brothers, Keke Palmer, Trisha Yearwood, Ava Max, and Eric Church, with Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose serving as host.
Otago Daily Times
29-06-2025
- Science
- Otago Daily Times
The journey of our branching trees
Our trees have some intriguing family histories. International travellers to Aotearoa New Zealand often comment about how far our country is from the rest of the world. However, it wasn't always so, 180 million years ago we were part of Gondwana. Visitors from Australia, Antarctica, South America, Africa, Arabia and India could have gone overland to Zealandia on our one enormous supercontinent. The breakup of Gondwana occurred over tens of millions of years. The theory of plate tectonics underlies this "continental drift". It is a slow journey. Tectonic plates move about as fast as fingernails grow. Zealandia, which became present-day Aotearoa New Zealand and New Caledonia, began to separate from Australia about 85 million years ago. At that time, Australia remained connected to Antarctica, which in turn was still attached to South America. The Tasman Sea widened gradually, reaching its present size about 65 million years ago. Australia did not separate from Antarctica until about 35 million years ago. These ancient geological events have played a key role in the evolution of our plants and animals. Terrestrial organisms that became isolated on the different pieces of continental crust evolved to be different from each other over evolutionary time. Long-term isolation sets up a situation where related species live on the different remnants of Gondwana, separated by oceans. Scientists call this process of geographical separation and subsequent divergence "vicariance". The alternative is "dispersal" — that somehow terrestrial organisms have flown, rafted, swum or otherwise found their way to new landmasses, unrelated to our geologic history. But how can we tell the difference? It's in the genes. One of the classical examples of a southern hemisphere "Gondwana distribution" are our southern beeches, the majestic forest trees that were, until recently, classified in the genus Nothofagus . Different species live in South America, New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand. Their fossil record extends back 80 million years, and there are even fossils known from Antarctica. Their seeds are intolerant of salt water, which seems to rule out long-distance dispersal across the oceans that now separate the different species. Southern beeches seem like a perfect example of vicariance. Genetic investigations have confirmed that their evolutionary origin is ancient, with different branches of the evolutionary tree separating between 60 and 80 million years ago. This timing has led New Zealand botanists to argue for the use of different generic names for these lineages. And so, we now call the silver beech, Lophozonia menziesii , and place the remaining New Zealand tawhai species in Fuscospora : red beech, F. fusca ; black beech, F. solandri ; mountain beech F. cliffortioides and hard beech, F. truncata . Only silver, red and mountain beech grow naturally in Otago and Southland. Tahina/silver beech is the sole species native to the Dunedin area. But genetics also shows that the evolution of these tree species is not as simple as we once thought. For instance, the close relationships of New Zealand and Australian species must be a consequence of transtasman dispersal, not vicariance. The evolutionary tree shown below summarises this genetic evidence. Let me explain the reasoning. If the New Zealand and Australian lineages of Lophozonia had evolved vicariantly, their most recent common ancestor would have lived at least 85 million years ago. But the evolutionary tree shows this ancestor lived only about 27 million years ago, long after the Tasman Sea had formed. Our tahina/silver beech is not derived from some ancient ancestral species rafting for 100 million years on a drifting Zealandia. Similarly, the New Zealand and Australian lines of Fuscospora separated just over 30 million years ago, again a date inconsistent with vicariance. Thus, the diversification within each of these beech genera is the result of a transtasman dispersal event. Nevertheless, the tree also shows the result of a likely vicariant divergence. The separation of the progenitor of the South American F. alessandri from the Australasian lineages happened about 55 million years ago. This timing is earlier than the separation of Australia from South America and Antarctica, and so this branching of the tree was probably driven by tectonic events. So, in short, perhaps like much of the real world, evolutionary history can be a little complicated. Southern beeches have evolved as a consequence of both vicariance and dispersal. I have run out of room and yet I haven't even told you about the wondrous mutually beneficial association these trees have with a group of fungi that live on their underground roots. What I can say, as I write this article, is that the silver beech/tahina right outside my window must have such fungi, as it has grown more than 8m in height since we planted it 30 years ago. Hamish G. Spencer is Sesquicentennial Distinguished Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otag o
Winnipeg Free Press
22-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Jury convicts New York-Paris flight stowaway who slipped past gate agents
NEW YORK (AP) — A jury on Thursday convicted a woman who sneaked onto a flight from New York to Paris without a boarding pass by slipping past security and airline gate agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport last year. The short trial of Svetlana Dali concluded with a guilty finding on a stowaway charge by jurors in federal court in Brooklyn. Jury selection and opening statements were both held on Tuesday. The judge did not set a sentencing date. Dali faces up to six months in prison, according to her sentencing guidelines. To date, she has been in custody for more than five months. Dali's lawyer did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment. Surveillance video shows Dali, a 57-year-old Russian citizen with U.S. residency, glomming onto a group of ticketed passengers as they pass two Delta Air Lines staffers who were checking tickets and didn't appear to notice Dali. She then strolls with the group onto an air bridge to a plane bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Dali had initially been turned away from a security checkpoint at JFK by a Transportation Security Administration official after she was unable to show a boarding pass, court documents say. But she was able to sneak into a special security lane for airline employees and, masked by a large Air Europa flight crew, made it to an area where she was screened and patted down. Then she went to the Delta gate. On the plane, she hid in a bathroom for several hours and wasn't discovered by Delta crew members until the plane was nearing Paris, court documents say. Crew members notified French authorities, who detained her before she entered customs at the Paris airport, according to court documents. She was eventually flown back to New York and admitted to authorities that she got on the plane without a ticket and that she intentionally evaded security and Delta employees so she could avoid buying a ticket, court records said. During two hours of questioning by an FBI agent, Dali said she flew to France because she had to the leave the U.S., where she said police refused to protect her from people who were poisoning her, according to court documents. Dali was initially released after her arrest with electric monitoring but then was arrested again in Buffalo, New York, after she cut off the monitor and tried to enter Canada. Prosecutors said Dali evaded security measures at two other airports before the JFK incident, and they believe she may have stowed away on another flight. Two days before she sneaked on the Paris flight, she was able to get through TSA, identification and boarding pass checkpoints at Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Connecticut, by hiding among other passengers. Authorities said she unsuccessfully tried to get on a plane and then left the airport. In February 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered Dali hiding in a bathroom at Miami International Airport, prosecutors said. Dali, who was found in a secured area in the international arrivals zone, was fingerprinted, her baggage was checked and she was escorted out of the airport, after the agents couldn't confirm her story that she had just arrived on an Air France flight and was waiting for her husband, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said federal agents did not make any findings that Dali had illegally traveled as a stowaway to Miami, but her statements to law enforcement after her arrest in Paris appeared to indicate that she had flown into Miami illegally. Dali told authorities that she returned to the U.S. in February 2024 after spending time in Europe, but there were no records of her being admitted to the U.S. within the past five years.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Amazing 15-Million-Year-Old Fish Fossil Found in The Australian Desert
An extraordinary fossil bed in the arid grasslands of the Australian continent, called McGraths Flat, really is the Lagerstätte that keeps on giving. Just a few years after uncovering a trove of exceptionally preserved fossils, paleontologists have now described a brand new fish species that lived and died during the Miocene, 15 million years ago. So perfectly intact is this animal that a team of paleontologists led by Matthew McCurry of the Australian Museum Research Institute could determine its coloration. They could even see what at least one specimen devoured for its last meal – the contents of which were still in its stomach after millions of years trapped in the iron-rich rocks of the fossil bed. The fish has been named Ferruaspis brocksi, after paleontologist Jochen Brocks of the Australian National University, who discovered several specimens of the fossilized fish at McGraths Flat. "This little fish is one of the most beautiful fossils I've found at McGraths Flat, and finding the first vertebrate among the abundant plant and insect fossils was a real surprise," Brocks says. "This discovery opens new avenues for understanding the evolutionary history of Australia's freshwater fish species and ancient ecosystems." Fossilization is an intense process that often involves pressure and heat – it's not kind on bone, never mind soft tissue. For an organism to be fossilized after it dies is rare. For soft tissue to survive is rarer still. Fossil beds in which the preservation level is so exquisite that soft tissue and fine details remain are known as Lagerstätten. McGraths Flat is one such Lagerstätte, a formation of an iron-rich rock called goethite in which fossils were so intricately captured that structures smaller than a cell can be discerned. It was in this bed that Brocks found several beautiful fish of a species never seen before, and a family never found fossilized in Australia, freshwater smelt. "The discovery of the 15 million-year-old freshwater fish fossil offers us an unprecedented opportunity to understand Australia's ancient ecosystems and the evolution of its fish species," McCurry explains. "This fossil is part of the Osmeriforms fish family – a diverse group of fish species within Australia that includes species like the Australian grayling and the Australian smelt. But, without fossils it has been hard for us to tell exactly when the group arrived in Australia and whether they changed at all through time." Because the fish specimens were so well preserved, the researchers were able to make observations about their lifestyle. F. brocksi was an opportunistic feeder that mostly dined on invertebrates; stomach contents included insect wings and a partial bivalve shell. However, the most abundant ingredient was the larvae of midges – tiny flying insects that lay their eggs in water, where the larvae grow until they are ready to enter their adult life stage. "One of the fossils even shows a parasite attached to the tail of the fish," McCurry says. "It's a juvenile freshwater mussel called a glochidium. These juvenile mussels attach themselves to the gills or tails of fish to hitch rides up and down streams." Using a powerful microscope, the researchers were even able to make out tiny, subcellular structures in the skin of the fish, called melanosomes, which give tissues their pigment. These revealed that the fish were darker on their backs, or dorsal sides, and paler on their tummies, or ventral sides. They even had two dark stripes running down the length of their bodies, near the spinal column. "Fossilized melanosomes have previously enabled paleontologists to reconstruct the color of feathers," marvels paleontologist Michael Frese of the University of Canberra and CSIRO, "but melanosomes have never been used to reconstruct the color pattern of a long extinct fish species." The McGraths Flat fossils have much to offer us yet. The researchers have described a wonderful 'giant' trapdoor spider discovered therein, but there are multitudinous other fossils from the site, including plants, insects, and even a bird feather that has not yet been formally described. "The fossils found at this site formed between 11 and 16 million years ago and provide a window into the past," McCurry says. "They prove that the area was once a temperate, wet rainforest and that life was rich and abundant in the Central Tablelands." The research has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. New Type of Fossilization Revealed by Griffon Vulture Found in Volcanic Ash Reservoirs of Clean Energy Could Be Hiding Inside Our Planet's Mountain Ranges 'Microlightning' Could Help Solve a Crucial Question on How Life Began
Fox News
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
FBI agent who criticized the bureau under Trump is charged with disclosing confidential information
An FBI agent who criticized the bureau during President Donald Trump's first term was arrested Monday on a charge of sharing confidential FBI documents and messages to write a book about his time at the federal agency. Johnathan Buma, a 15-year FBI veteran, was arrested as he was getting ready to board an international flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, an arrest affidavit stated. Buma is accused of printing about 130 files of classified FBI documents and messages and later sharing the material with associates for a book he was writing about his career at the bureau. "The book draft contained information that BUMA obtained through his position as an FBI Special Agent that relates to the FBI's efforts and investigations into a foreign country's weapons of mass destruction ('WMD') program," according to the court document. "On November 2, 2023, BUMA wrote an email to various personal associates assisting him in negotiating a book deal with a publishing company." Buma also shared excerpts of the book that contained confidential information in posts on social media, the document alleges. The court document stated that Buma had issues with the bureau for years. In 2022, Buma began voicing his concerns about how the bureau handled certain investigations to various government agencies, Congress and members of the news media, according to the document. Buma told Insider during an interview in September 2023 that when he approached his superior about how former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was working for the Trump campaign, may have been compromised in a Russian counter-influence operation, he was shut down. Buma said when he had earlier told the superior about Hunter Biden's alleged business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, the superior was "very interested." Fox News Digital reached out to an attorney for Buma for comment. The U.S. Attorney's Office Central District of California told Fox News Digital that Buma was ordered released on $100,000 bond after being charged with one misdemeanor count of disclosure of confidential information.
