La Fiscalía de Florida impulsó una orden de arresto contra Raúl Castro por su presunta responsabilidad en el derribo de dos avionetas civiles en 1996, en el que murieron cuatro personas. La medida reaviva las tensiones entre Washington y La Habana en medio de la presión de Trump sobre la isla y la proximidad de las elecciones de medio mandato en EE. UU. ¿Justicia o estrategia electoral? Lo analizamos en El Debate de France 24.

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s spectacled cobra (Naja naja) carries a two-million-year-old genetic mystery, and a new study finds that the island’s cobras form a genetically distinct lineage, reopening a taxonomic question raised by a Sri Lankan zoologist nearly nine decades ago. The study also established that the spectacled cobra has evolved from an African ancestor that reached the region via the Middle East. The story dates back to 1939, when Sri Lankan zoologist P. E. P. Deraniyagala described a distinctive form of the spectacled cobra with additional eye-like markings on its hood. He named it Naia naia colour var. polyocellata. At the time, it was treated as a color morph of the Indian spectacled cobra than a distinct subspecies native to Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala returned to cobra taxonomy in 1945, proposing several geographical races of the spectacled cobra across the Indian subcontinent, and in 1960, revisited cobra taxonomy. Subsequent morphological work, however, consolidated these geographical forms under Naja naja. Then, in 2022, the question was reopened. A genetic study proposed resurrecting Deraniyagala’s polyocellata as a separate species as Naja polyocellata, after finding substantial genetic differences between Sri Lankan cobras and the Indian mainland cobras. An albino cobra is a snake with a genetic mutation that causes a complete lack of dark pigments, and such unusually colored cobras are reported more often in some regions than others. Image courtesy of Dushantha Kandambi. However, that proposal was challenged the following year. In 2023, herpetologists Wolfgang Wüster of Bangor University, U.K., and Frank…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Nem o homem lobo do homem, nem o bom selvagem que a sociedade corrompeu: o que o mundo necessita de recuperar são os valores das pessoas comuns, a segurança, o trabalho, a realização individual.

COLOMBO –- Wildlife enthusiast Pathum Bandara watched Kavantissa, believed to be Sri Lanka’s tallest living tusker, moving gently through the landscape on Sept. 20 around Galgamuwa in the island’s northwestern dry zone, a well-known human-elephant conflict zone. The following day, Bandara noticed that the elephant was limping. A closer look revealed a gunshot wound on his right foreleg, close to the knee. The discovery was alarming because an untreated gunshot wound could become infected and cause severe trauma, potentially threatening an elephant’s ability to walk, feed and survive. The Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) dispatched a team to treat the elephant. DWC’s veterinary surgeon Isuru Hewakottage said Kavantissa was sedated to enable the cleaning and treatment of the wound. He received several rounds of powerful antibiotics and remains under observation. Following treatment, Kavantissa has begun moving between small forest patches, sometimes crossing human settlements and the well-known elephant passage near Galgamuwa. The tusker appeared to be recovering but became aggressive after the gunshot injury, sometimes even chasing villagers and wildlife officers, exposing the tusker to renewed threats including the possibility of being fired at, Bandara told Mongabay. Iconic tusker Kavantissa, left, with Sankha, a young elephant, photographed in 2022. Sankha had a mobility restriction caused by a previous gunshot injury and died after falling into a pit. Image courtesy of Pathum Bandara. Bandara recalls the plight of another young tusker once closely associated with Kavantissa. Sankha, a young tusker, was about half Kavantissa’s age and was often seen together during…This article was originally published on Mongabay