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This diamond is particularly rare because it features another smaller diamond moving freely inside it, making it one of the rarest finds in the diamond industry.

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The Omiltemi cottontail rabbit, a species lost to science since 1904, has been rediscovered in Mexico's Sierra Madre del Sur mountains.

The elusive rabbit was spotted by a team led by José Alberto Almazán-Catalán, president of the Instituto para el Manejo y Conservación de la Biodiversidad (INMACOB).

The rabbit was caught hopping around on camera traps, seemingly unaware that it was lost at all.

important rabbit news

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Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt used her first media briefing to promote a lie about U.S. foreign aid spending. The falsehood came as Leavitt attempted to justify the widely decried and possibly illegal federal spending freeze ordered by President Donald Trump via the Office of Management and Budget. “DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” she claimed. Trump megadonor and Department of Government Efficiency Chair Elon Musk amplified the made-up story on his X account. “Tip of iceberg,” Musk wrote, later adding, “My guess is that a lot of that money ended up in the pockets [of] Hamas, not actually condoms.”

The attempted attack on the Biden administration is a complete lie. In September, the U.S. Agency for International Development released a report on government spending on  contraception and condom shipments made over the last year. None of the $60.8 million was sent to Gaza or anywhere else in the Middle East. Despite Leavitt’s attempt to scandalize President Joe Biden’s foreign aid spending on contraception, he wasn’t the only one to do it. During his first term in 2019, Trump spent about $40 million on contraceptive aids as part of international relief expenditures.

Trump Misadministration Spokesliar Karoline Leavitt got busted for telling a ridiculous lie about $50M in condoms being sent to Gaza. There was no such purchase earmarked for condoms to Gaza under Joe Biden, let alone $50M worth.

See Also:

NewsNation: Did the Biden admin actually send $50M worth of condoms to Gaza? No.

Snopes: No Evidence US Govt Allocated $50M To Send Condoms to Gaza

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Since 2013, James Howells has been hoping to recover a laptop hard drive that he says contains the private key for cryptocurrency which he says he mined in 2009. Ars wrote about it at the time, noting that the value of a bitcoin had just passed $1,000, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.

The alleged number of bitcoins has changed a bit, with Howells now saying he lost 8,000 bitcoins. The bitcoin price exceeded $100,000 last month and was $95,636 as of last Friday, or $765 million for 8,000 bitcoins.

High Court judge Keyser KC issued his ruling last week, siding with the defendant in Howells v. Newport City Council. Howells has no realistic chance of success at trial, the judge ruled. Howells sought “an order that the defendant either deliver the hard drive or allow his team of experts to excavate the landfill in order to find it, and (in the alternative) compensation equivalent to the value of the Bitcoin that he can no longer access.”

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Regularly occurring bouts of retinal movements suggest an REM sleep–like state in jumping spiders

Sleep and sleep-like states are present across the animal kingdom, with recent studies convincingly demonstrating sleep-like states in arthropods, nematodes, and even cnidarians. However, the existence of different sleep phases across taxa is as yet unclear. In particular, the study of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is still largely centered on terrestrial vertebrates, particularly mammals and birds. The most salient indicator of REM sleep is the movement of eyes during this phase. Movable eyes, however, have evolved only in a limited number of lineages—an adaptation notably absent in insects and most terrestrial arthropods—restricting cross-species comparisons. Jumping spiders, however, possess movable retinal tubes to redirect gaze, and in newly emerged spiderlings, these movements can be directly observed through their temporarily translucent exoskeleton. Here, we report evidence for an REM sleep–like state in a terrestrial invertebrate: periodic bouts of retinal movements coupled with limb twitching and stereotyped leg curling behaviors during nocturnal resting in a jumping spider. Observed retinal movement bouts were consistent, including regular durations and intervals, with both increasing over the course of the night. That these characteristic REM sleep–like behaviors exist in a highly visual, long-diverged lineage further challenges our understanding of this sleep state. Comparisons across such long-diverged lineages likely hold important questions and answers about the visual brain as well as the origin, evolution, and function of REM sleep.

!!!

Periodic bouts of retinal movements in spiderlings were clearly visible (Movie S2) with consistent durations (median = 77.13 s, interquartile range (IQR) = 19.65 s, nobs = 330, nsubj = 29) and regular intervals (median = 16.97 min, IQR = 6.56 min, nobs = 260, nsubj = 17). Both the duration and the intervals increased significantly over the course of the night (duration: generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) analysis of deviance, χ2 = 13.82, P = 0.001, nobs = 330, nsubj = 29, 11% increase; intervals: GLMM analysis of deviance, χ2 = 26.92, P < 0.001, nobs = 260, nsubj = 17, 38% increase) (Fig. 1 A and D and SI Appendix, SI Extended Methods). Retinal movements were accompanied by body movements: characteristic leg curls (often accompanied by additional twitching) (Movie S3) or uncoordinated twitches of single limbs, the opisthosoma, and/or the spinnerets (Movie S4). Leg curls were associated with retinal movements in 100% of all observations (135/135). Conversely, leg curls were only present in 39.5% of all observed retinal movement bouts (135/342).

No retinal movements were observed during coordinated behaviors, such as stretching, readjustment of the supporting silk line (Movie S5), or cleaning sequences consisting of brush- ing movements (Movie S6). The highly coordinated nature of these movements suggests that animals were awake during these behaviors. Cleaning typically occurred shortly after REM sleep–like states, implying brief awakenings.

shockingly strong evidence of a dream-analogous process in spiders!

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The charger on the British Overseas Territory, nearly 2,000km from the west coast of Africa, is part of a trial by Norwegian charging company Easee and Japanese car brand Subaru.

With very few electric vehicles on the island so far, the government is hoping that improving infrastructure will incentivise more people to ditch their petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

And, as St Helena looks to accelerate its green transition, it’s part of a strategy to wean the island off of expensive fossil fuel imports.

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A man’s ongoing efforts to track down the elusive sasquatch in remote areas of British Columbia suggest he’s capable of working, and therefore not entitled to spousal support, a judge has ruled.

The unusual circumstances were detailed in a recent divorce decision handed down in B.C. Supreme Court, which makes multiple references to the 57-year-old’s sasquatch-seeking expeditions.

It was one such venture that led to the couple’s separation in August 2020.

His wife told the court he went on a camping trip on Vancouver Island that month in search of the mythical ape-like creature – and brought along an ex-girlfriend without telling her.

“The respondent was extremely upset by this,” Justice Robin Baird wrote, in his Jan. 17 decision.

“Before the claimant returned home she fired off a text to him declaring that their marriage was over, and she never changed her mind.”

The husband’s claim for spousal support also hinged on him being unable to work due to a mishap that occurred during a previous sasquatch outing years earlier.

[...]

But Baird was ultimately not convinced the husband was left “totally disabled” by the accident, or that he “cannot earn income from employment of some kind or other” – partly because of his ongoing sasquatch-related endeavours.

“The claimant continues to enjoy camping, fishing, hunting, riding ‘quad’ motorcycles, and exploring remote areas of B.C. in search of sasquatch,” the judge wrote.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

This is definitely one for my unhinged news tag

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In the Ukrainian 95th Air Assault Brigade’s video, soldiers disclosed details about the capture of a North Korean soldier that took place on 9 January. Ukrainian soldier Pavlo recounted that after destroying attacking North Korean troops, a drone operator spotted movement on the ground. When Ukrainians approached the soldier, he remained unresponsive in Ukrainian, Russian, or English, wearing a non-Ukrainian uniform. The soldiers resorted to gestures to communicate.

“He had a grenade and a knife on his body armor, which he showed he was dropping. In his pouches, there was something red we initially thought was a makeshift lighter. But when he took it out, it was a sausage – he was indicating it was for eating… and he wouldn’t drop it, we let him keep it,” Pavlo said.

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In November, the far-right populist, who governed Brazil from 2019 until 2023, was one of nearly 40 people who were formally accused of being part of a criminal plot to stop his leftwing successor from taking power by staging a rightwing coup.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers petitioned the supreme court earlier this month, arguing their client should be allowed a six-day trip to the US in order to attend the 20 January swearing-in of Trump, the Brazilian politician’s most important foreign ally. This week Bolsonaro told the New York Times he was so excited about the prospect of seeing Trump in the flesh that he wasn’t “even taking Viagra anymore”.

But the request was disregarded, and on Thursday, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ruled that the “seriousness of the crimes ascribed” to Bolsonaro meant he should not be given back his passport in case he absconded.

Pardon?

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A man who stuffed a live eel up his backside was left in agony when the sharp-toothed sea creature tried to bite its way out of his digestive tract.

Horrified medics in Vietnam discovered the 26-inch long eel in X-ray scans taken to diagnose the cause of his pain on July 27, local media reports.

They found the eel had attempted to chew its way out by biting through the wall of his large intestine.

But initial attempts to remove the fish with a probe through his anus were thwarted when medics at Viet Duc Hospital, in Hanoi, found a lemon stuffed up there too.

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Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, January 18, 1939

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there’s a lot going on here

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The incinerator opened in 2016 after a three-year build and has now been fully operational for six years. It deals with waste from Plymouth, Devon and Torbay that is not recycled or composted and generates electricity as well as usable heat.

MVV says it will be an 'unforgettable day of excitement and entertainment'. There will be a range of engaging games and activities, plus a range of food stalls and tours of the facility.

An MVV spokesperson said: "Our team at MVV Environment Devonport is eager to showcase our facility and provide insights into our environmentally sustainable practices. You'll have the opportunity to learn about our commitment to protecting the environment and fostering a greener future for our community.

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Here’s a horror story for anyone who had their tonsils taken out when they were young. A CNN article published this week details a woman whose tonsils grew back decades later—necessitating a second surgery for removal.

According to CNN, Katy Golden first had her tonsils taken out in 1983 at the age of five. Over forty years later, Golden’s doctor discovered the regenerated tonsils, which likely had been worsening her painful sore throat. Thankfully, Golden’s second surgery went smoothly, and tonsil regrowth rarely happens in general.

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Six months ago, a team of paleontologists investigated a quarry in Oxfordshire, England, that had some unusual bumps in its floor. The bumps, as it turns out, constitute about 200 dinosaur footprints from the Jurassic Period, that altogether make up the largest dinosaur trackway in the United Kingdom.

The tracks were made by a bevy of beasts, including large herbivorous sauropods and carnivorous theropods—specifically, the research team believes they were left by the 60-foot-long (18-meter-long) Cetiosaurus and the 29.5-foot-long (9-meter-long) Megalosaurus, respectively. Megalosaurus became the first dinosaur to be scientifically named back in 1824 (that’s right—modern dinosaur research just celebrated its 200th anniversary).

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found,” said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, in a University of Birmingham release.

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A 23-year-old from Santa Cruz, California, may have just set a world record for riding the biggest wave ever surfed. Alessandro “Alo” Slebir caught the wave at Mavericks surf spot near Half Moon Bay, a popular surfing destination just south of San Francisco.

Should the measurements hold up, Slebir’s wave is estimated to have been 108 feet tall. Sebastian Steudtner set the previous world record in Nazaré, Portugal back in 2022. Steudtner rode an 86-foot wave, an incredible ride you can watch here.

If Slebir’s record holds up to scrutiny, he may have just shattered the old record, establishing a new highwater mark that may not be topped for a long time.