the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread
- Thread starter wader
- Start date
wader
Well-Known Angler
I mean - WTF???!???!?!?
www.yahoo.com
Former Louisiana Teacher Admits Feeding Students Sperm-Laced Cupcakes
Cynthia Perkins was sentenced to 40 years of hard labor in a deal that requires her to testify against her ex-husband, a former sheriff's lieutenant.
For any of us waiting for Porsches, and Friends of @CELLFISH waiting for a Bentley, things look grim...
The 650-foot-long Felicity Ace car carrier caught fire and was abandoned off the coast of the Azores. Credit...Marinha Portuguesa
A mammoth cargo ship believed to be carrying thousands of vehicles including 1,100 Porsches was on fire and drifting off the coast of the Azores on Thursday after its 22 crew members were rescued from the vessel.
The fire broke out on Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, called the Felicity Ace, which had departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday, according to a ship tracking website. The ship was about 200 miles from Terceira Island in the Azores, the Portuguese island territory, when Portuguese forces moved in on Wednesday to evacuate the crew.
No rescuers or crew members were injured in the “highly skilled and physically demanding” operation, which included a helicopter that whisked the crew members to the nearby Portuguese island of Faial, according to the authorities.
It was unclear how much of the 650-foot, 60,000-ton cargo ship’s inventory was lost in the fire and how the authorities would tend to the stricken ship. The shipping company could not immediately be reached.
The Drive, an automotive website, reported that the Volkswagen Group estimated nearly 4,000 vehicles were on board, including 189 Bentleys. Emails sent to the Volkswagen Group were not immediately answered.
The fire comes as showrooms across the country are trying to meet consumer demand amid supply-chain problems caused partly by the pandemic. Low interest rates, higher savings rates and government stimulus payments have increased demand, while automakers have struggled to weather a shortage of computer chips.
Matt Farah, a car enthusiast and editor of The Smoking Tire, had been waiting for his 2022 frozen-berry metallic Boxster Spyder, with a retail price of about $123,000 and modified to his precise specifications, since August. “The best sports car of all time, hands down,” he wrote.
He received disappointing news on Wednesday, he said: “I just got a call from my dealer. My car is now adrift, possibly on fire, in the middle of the ocean.”
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Farah said that a Porsche representative confirmed that his car was on the boat and apologized for the inconvenience.
“That was yesterday, and I have not heard any updates since,” he said. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the fire and everyone is safe, which is the most important thing. I’m sure that whatever happens going forward, Porsche will do right by their customers.”
In a statement on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Porsche Cars North America said that 1,100 of the company’s cars were on board but that the fate of the vehicles was unknown. She encouraged customers worried about their car to contact their dealer.
“Our immediate thoughts are of relief that the 22 crew members of the merchant ship Felicity Ace are safe and well,” the statement said.
Ship Carrying 1,100 Porsches and Other Luxury Cars Is Burning and Adrift
A fire broke out Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, which departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was due to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday.
The 650-foot-long Felicity Ace car carrier caught fire and was abandoned off the coast of the Azores. Credit...Marinha Portuguesa
A mammoth cargo ship believed to be carrying thousands of vehicles including 1,100 Porsches was on fire and drifting off the coast of the Azores on Thursday after its 22 crew members were rescued from the vessel.
The fire broke out on Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, called the Felicity Ace, which had departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday, according to a ship tracking website. The ship was about 200 miles from Terceira Island in the Azores, the Portuguese island territory, when Portuguese forces moved in on Wednesday to evacuate the crew.
No rescuers or crew members were injured in the “highly skilled and physically demanding” operation, which included a helicopter that whisked the crew members to the nearby Portuguese island of Faial, according to the authorities.
It was unclear how much of the 650-foot, 60,000-ton cargo ship’s inventory was lost in the fire and how the authorities would tend to the stricken ship. The shipping company could not immediately be reached.
The Drive, an automotive website, reported that the Volkswagen Group estimated nearly 4,000 vehicles were on board, including 189 Bentleys. Emails sent to the Volkswagen Group were not immediately answered.
The fire comes as showrooms across the country are trying to meet consumer demand amid supply-chain problems caused partly by the pandemic. Low interest rates, higher savings rates and government stimulus payments have increased demand, while automakers have struggled to weather a shortage of computer chips.
Matt Farah, a car enthusiast and editor of The Smoking Tire, had been waiting for his 2022 frozen-berry metallic Boxster Spyder, with a retail price of about $123,000 and modified to his precise specifications, since August. “The best sports car of all time, hands down,” he wrote.
He received disappointing news on Wednesday, he said: “I just got a call from my dealer. My car is now adrift, possibly on fire, in the middle of the ocean.”
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Farah said that a Porsche representative confirmed that his car was on the boat and apologized for the inconvenience.
“That was yesterday, and I have not heard any updates since,” he said. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the fire and everyone is safe, which is the most important thing. I’m sure that whatever happens going forward, Porsche will do right by their customers.”
In a statement on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Porsche Cars North America said that 1,100 of the company’s cars were on board but that the fate of the vehicles was unknown. She encouraged customers worried about their car to contact their dealer.
“Our immediate thoughts are of relief that the 22 crew members of the merchant ship Felicity Ace are safe and well,” the statement said.
longcast
Well-Known Angler
Yeah, got the call.For any of us waiting for Porsches, and Friends of @CELLFISH waiting for a Bentley, things look grim...
Ship Carrying 1,100 Porsches and Other Luxury Cars Is Burning and Adrift
A fire broke out Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, which departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was due to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday.
The 650-foot-long Felicity Ace car carrier caught fire and was abandoned off the coast of the Azores. Credit...Marinha Portuguesa
A mammoth cargo ship believed to be carrying thousands of vehicles including 1,100 Porsches was on fire and drifting off the coast of the Azores on Thursday after its 22 crew members were rescued from the vessel.
The fire broke out on Wednesday morning in the cargo hold of the ship, called the Felicity Ace, which had departed from Emden, Germany, on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Wednesday, according to a ship tracking website. The ship was about 200 miles from Terceira Island in the Azores, the Portuguese island territory, when Portuguese forces moved in on Wednesday to evacuate the crew.
No rescuers or crew members were injured in the “highly skilled and physically demanding” operation, which included a helicopter that whisked the crew members to the nearby Portuguese island of Faial, according to the authorities.
It was unclear how much of the 650-foot, 60,000-ton cargo ship’s inventory was lost in the fire and how the authorities would tend to the stricken ship. The shipping company could not immediately be reached.
The Drive, an automotive website, reported that the Volkswagen Group estimated nearly 4,000 vehicles were on board, including 189 Bentleys. Emails sent to the Volkswagen Group were not immediately answered.
The fire comes as showrooms across the country are trying to meet consumer demand amid supply-chain problems caused partly by the pandemic. Low interest rates, higher savings rates and government stimulus payments have increased demand, while automakers have struggled to weather a shortage of computer chips.
Matt Farah, a car enthusiast and editor of The Smoking Tire, had been waiting for his 2022 frozen-berry metallic Boxster Spyder, with a retail price of about $123,000 and modified to his precise specifications, since August. “The best sports car of all time, hands down,” he wrote.
He received disappointing news on Wednesday, he said: “I just got a call from my dealer. My car is now adrift, possibly on fire, in the middle of the ocean.”
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Farah said that a Porsche representative confirmed that his car was on the boat and apologized for the inconvenience.
“That was yesterday, and I have not heard any updates since,” he said. “I’m glad no one was hurt in the fire and everyone is safe, which is the most important thing. I’m sure that whatever happens going forward, Porsche will do right by their customers.”
In a statement on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Porsche Cars North America said that 1,100 of the company’s cars were on board but that the fate of the vehicles was unknown. She encouraged customers worried about their car to contact their dealer.
“Our immediate thoughts are of relief that the 22 crew members of the merchant ship Felicity Ace are safe and well,” the statement said.
movetheboat
Well-Known Angler
NewsWorldAmericas
San Francisco
1 day ago
Medical examiners have ruled it was Covid that killed a father and his two adult daughters in December, after their unexplained deaths shook a quiet Southern California community.
Philip Ramirez, 87; Diane Ramirez, 58; and Susan Ramirez, 49, all died from Covid, with other contributing conditions, according to the Ventura
Family of three all found dead at home from Covid
Police visited the home after the family wasn’t heard from for days
Josh MarcusSan Francisco
1 day ago
Medical examiners have ruled it was Covid that killed a father and his two adult daughters in December, after their unexplained deaths shook a quiet Southern California community.
Philip Ramirez, 87; Diane Ramirez, 58; and Susan Ramirez, 49, all died from Covid, with other contributing conditions, according to the Ventura
wader
Well-Known Angler
not a WTF but it did catch my eye - I admire her as an actress but wasn't aware she had become an American citizen.....
Muri Assunção, New York Daily News
Sat, February 19, 2022, 2:05 PM
She’s a dame in the U.S.A.
Helen Mirren is reflecting on the moment she decided to become an American citizen.
The London-born stage and screen giant, who was appointed a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, said in a recent interview that although she’d had many connections with the United States, she only decided to apply for U.S. citizenship after living through the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
“My husband [Oscar-winning director Taylor Hackfordis] is American. My stepchildren are obviously American. My nephew lived in America, worked in America,” she told People. “So I had certainly been an American resident for a very long time.”
But in 2001 the world changed — and so did she.
The Oscar, Tony, Emmy and BAFTA-winning actress said that she was living in New York City during the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I saw the second tower come down,” she said recalling the tragic events that unfolded in lower Manhattan in the morning of that sunny late-summer Tuesday.
“I had an epiphany. I realized where my allegiance and my heart and my intellect lay in that confrontation between extremism, religiosity — all those things and everything that America represents,” she added
.
“And I thought, ‘I’m an American,’” the 76-year-old actress continued. “I got an American flag, and I put it outside my window.”
Mirren, who for a while didn’t know she had an option to have dual citizenship, eventually became an American citizen in 2017.
“When I understood, which I hadn’t quite grasped before, that I could be a British citizen and an American citizen — because I would not like to give up my British citizenship — then I thought, ‘Well, that’s great. That’s the perfect world,’” she said.
Becoming a citizen was “so moving,” she noted.
“I didn’t realize how profound a feeling it would be,” she continued. “It brought up feelings of patriotism that I didn’t think I had. I think it was to do with the intrinsic generosity of America.”
The prolific actress, who has appeared in more than 140 films and TV shows — including “The Queen,” “The Good Liar” and three of the “Fast & Furious” movies — is set to be honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Screen Actors Guild on Feb. 27.
Helen Mirren reveals the ‘epiphany’ that led her to want to become an American citizen
Muri Assunção, New York Daily News
Sat, February 19, 2022, 2:05 PM
She’s a dame in the U.S.A.
Helen Mirren is reflecting on the moment she decided to become an American citizen.
The London-born stage and screen giant, who was appointed a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, said in a recent interview that although she’d had many connections with the United States, she only decided to apply for U.S. citizenship after living through the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
“My husband [Oscar-winning director Taylor Hackfordis] is American. My stepchildren are obviously American. My nephew lived in America, worked in America,” she told People. “So I had certainly been an American resident for a very long time.”
But in 2001 the world changed — and so did she.
The Oscar, Tony, Emmy and BAFTA-winning actress said that she was living in New York City during the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I saw the second tower come down,” she said recalling the tragic events that unfolded in lower Manhattan in the morning of that sunny late-summer Tuesday.
“I had an epiphany. I realized where my allegiance and my heart and my intellect lay in that confrontation between extremism, religiosity — all those things and everything that America represents,” she added
.
“And I thought, ‘I’m an American,’” the 76-year-old actress continued. “I got an American flag, and I put it outside my window.”
Mirren, who for a while didn’t know she had an option to have dual citizenship, eventually became an American citizen in 2017.
“When I understood, which I hadn’t quite grasped before, that I could be a British citizen and an American citizen — because I would not like to give up my British citizenship — then I thought, ‘Well, that’s great. That’s the perfect world,’” she said.
Becoming a citizen was “so moving,” she noted.
“I didn’t realize how profound a feeling it would be,” she continued. “It brought up feelings of patriotism that I didn’t think I had. I think it was to do with the intrinsic generosity of America.”
The prolific actress, who has appeared in more than 140 films and TV shows — including “The Queen,” “The Good Liar” and three of the “Fast & Furious” movies — is set to be honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Screen Actors Guild on Feb. 27.
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Mazel Tov NY!!!
Congratulations, road warrior. Last year you did business in five states in a week — emails from airports, phone calls from taxis, videoconferences from hotel rooms, business meals here and there. Later, when you took vacation in yet another state, you flipped open your laptop now and then to check in with colleagues.
Now the bad news: Depending on which states you went to, you may have to file tax returns in all six of them, even if your work there took mere minutes.
Ridiculous, right? That’s what the law says, though. According to the Tax Foundation, there are 24 states that require people who did work in their states to file tax returns no matter how short a time they worked or how little income they earned. (Examples are Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) In another five states, including California, there’s also no time minimum, although there is an income threshold below which you don’t have to file a return.
Most states don’t pursue short-time visitors for nickels and dimes because it’s not worth the effort. You’re unlikely to get a threatening letter from Nebraska because of that work phone call you made when you attended that wedding in Omaha. As written, though, the state laws “make scofflaws of us all,” says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation.
It’s actually worse than that. Some people, such as lawyers and accountants, can’t take the risk of getting caught bending the rules, so they have to file returns in every state where they worked, which for many can be a dozen or more. It’s also a paperwork burden for employers that try to play by the rules, because the states require them to withhold state taxes from paychecks.
It’s understandable that states would try to tax professional athletes, pop stars and other high earners who work in their states even briefly, because lots of money is involved. But laws that target everyone are just kind of silly.
Congress could fix the problem by saying that you don’t owe income tax in a state unless you work there at least 30 days in a year. That would strike a reasonable balance between the competing priorities of completeness and simplicity, says Andrew Moylan, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Illinois and West Virginia have already set 30-day work minimums. Arizona, Hawaii and Utah have gone even further with 60-day minimums.
There’s legislation in Congress to require a 30-day work minimum for most people, excluding professional athletes and other “public figures.” It passed the House in 2012, 2016 and 2017. It’s co-sponsored in the Senate this session by John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who don’t agree on much. But Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has consistently opposed the legislation.
New York State makes considerable money by taxing out-of-staters who come to the state — especially New York City — for business. New York’s Division of Taxation and Finance “has aggressively enforced the law and gotten more aggressive over time,” says Maureen Riehl, executive director of the Mobile Workforce Coalition. She told me that state employees go to trade shows in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and take pictures of the booths so they can go after companies that send their employees to New York.
“We’ve been told by companies that they’ve avoided doing events in New York because of this,” says Ken Pokalsky, a vice president of the Business Council of New York State. “I’m not saying it’s widespread, but it’s one more thing.” He said his organization favors a 30-day work minimum for state taxation. The state tax agency did not reply to my voice mail requests for a response.
(Complicating matters, there’s a related problem called the convenience rule that’s on the books in five states, including New York. Those states claim the right to tax people if the company they work for is headquartered in the state. So workers can be taxed on the same dollar of income by their home state and the state of their company headquarters.)
State laws that require tax filings even for incidental work have become a bigger problem since the pandemic began, because more people are working remotely. But sponsors in the House and Senate aren’t pushing the bill this session because they don’t think it has a chance given the opposition from two key New Yorkers: Schumer and Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, through which the House bill must pass. “As long as they sit where they sit, this issue’s on pause,” Riehl said.
Angelo Roefaro, Schumer’s press secretary, told me today that Schumer and Nadler aren’t the only ones questioning the legislation. He said talks are continuing with other members of Congress as well as governors and state legislators.
For the time being, nothing is happening. As Walczak of the Tax Foundation wrote to me in an email: “Taxpayers shouldn’t be tasked with deciding when to ignore what is technically a tax filing obligation and when to comply with it. Tax laws should be enforceable and broadly enforced. If they can’t be reasonably enforced, or it would be undesirable to do so, then it’s worth revisiting that law.”
Congratulations, road warrior. Last year you did business in five states in a week — emails from airports, phone calls from taxis, videoconferences from hotel rooms, business meals here and there. Later, when you took vacation in yet another state, you flipped open your laptop now and then to check in with colleagues.
Now the bad news: Depending on which states you went to, you may have to file tax returns in all six of them, even if your work there took mere minutes.
Ridiculous, right? That’s what the law says, though. According to the Tax Foundation, there are 24 states that require people who did work in their states to file tax returns no matter how short a time they worked or how little income they earned. (Examples are Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) In another five states, including California, there’s also no time minimum, although there is an income threshold below which you don’t have to file a return.
Most states don’t pursue short-time visitors for nickels and dimes because it’s not worth the effort. You’re unlikely to get a threatening letter from Nebraska because of that work phone call you made when you attended that wedding in Omaha. As written, though, the state laws “make scofflaws of us all,” says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation.
It’s actually worse than that. Some people, such as lawyers and accountants, can’t take the risk of getting caught bending the rules, so they have to file returns in every state where they worked, which for many can be a dozen or more. It’s also a paperwork burden for employers that try to play by the rules, because the states require them to withhold state taxes from paychecks.
It’s understandable that states would try to tax professional athletes, pop stars and other high earners who work in their states even briefly, because lots of money is involved. But laws that target everyone are just kind of silly.
Congress could fix the problem by saying that you don’t owe income tax in a state unless you work there at least 30 days in a year. That would strike a reasonable balance between the competing priorities of completeness and simplicity, says Andrew Moylan, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Illinois and West Virginia have already set 30-day work minimums. Arizona, Hawaii and Utah have gone even further with 60-day minimums.
There’s legislation in Congress to require a 30-day work minimum for most people, excluding professional athletes and other “public figures.” It passed the House in 2012, 2016 and 2017. It’s co-sponsored in the Senate this session by John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, and Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who don’t agree on much. But Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has consistently opposed the legislation.
New York State makes considerable money by taxing out-of-staters who come to the state — especially New York City — for business. New York’s Division of Taxation and Finance “has aggressively enforced the law and gotten more aggressive over time,” says Maureen Riehl, executive director of the Mobile Workforce Coalition. She told me that state employees go to trade shows in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and take pictures of the booths so they can go after companies that send their employees to New York.
“We’ve been told by companies that they’ve avoided doing events in New York because of this,” says Ken Pokalsky, a vice president of the Business Council of New York State. “I’m not saying it’s widespread, but it’s one more thing.” He said his organization favors a 30-day work minimum for state taxation. The state tax agency did not reply to my voice mail requests for a response.
(Complicating matters, there’s a related problem called the convenience rule that’s on the books in five states, including New York. Those states claim the right to tax people if the company they work for is headquartered in the state. So workers can be taxed on the same dollar of income by their home state and the state of their company headquarters.)
State laws that require tax filings even for incidental work have become a bigger problem since the pandemic began, because more people are working remotely. But sponsors in the House and Senate aren’t pushing the bill this session because they don’t think it has a chance given the opposition from two key New Yorkers: Schumer and Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, through which the House bill must pass. “As long as they sit where they sit, this issue’s on pause,” Riehl said.
Angelo Roefaro, Schumer’s press secretary, told me today that Schumer and Nadler aren’t the only ones questioning the legislation. He said talks are continuing with other members of Congress as well as governors and state legislators.
For the time being, nothing is happening. As Walczak of the Tax Foundation wrote to me in an email: “Taxpayers shouldn’t be tasked with deciding when to ignore what is technically a tax filing obligation and when to comply with it. Tax laws should be enforceable and broadly enforced. If they can’t be reasonably enforced, or it would be undesirable to do so, then it’s worth revisiting that law.”
LOL, extra protein with that Family Dollar food purchase...
The F.D.A. has warned shoppers that some products purchased from Family Dollar stores in six states may be contaminated. Credit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
The value-store chain Family Dollar said on Saturday that it had temporarily closed more than 400 stores after the discovery of a rodent infestation and other unsanitary conditions at a distribution center in Arkansas touched off a far-reaching recall of food, dietary supplements, cosmetics and other products.
A recent Food and Drug Administration inspection of the facility, in West Memphis, Ark., found live and dead rodents “in various states of decay,” rodent droppings, evidence of gnawing and nesting, and products stored in conditions that did not protect against these unsanitary conditions, the agency said in a statement on Friday.
A fumigation of the facility last month revealed more than 1,100 dead rodents, and a review of company records indicated the collection of more than 2,300 rodents from late March to September, “demonstrating a history of infestation,” the agency said. Rodent contamination can cause salmonella and infectious diseases, the F.D.A. said.
Families rely on stores like Family Dollar for food, medicine and other products, and those items should be safe, Judith McMeekin, an associate commissioner in the agency’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, said in the statement.
“No one should be subjected to products stored in the kind of unacceptable conditions that we found in this Family Dollar distribution facility,” she said. “These conditions appear to be violations of federal law that could put families’ health at risk.”
Family Dollar said in a statement that the voluntary recall, which also covers drugs, medical devices and pet food, includes F.D.A.-regulated products that were stored and shipped from the distribution center to 404 stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Kayleigh Campbell, a Dollar Tree spokeswoman, said in an email on Saturday that the company had “temporarily closed the affected stores in order to proficiently conduct the voluntary recall,” and that the stores would reopen as soon as possible.
“We take situations like this very seriously and are committed to providing safe and quality products to our customers,” Ms. Campbell said. “We have been fully cooperating with all regulatory agencies in the resolution of this matter and are in the process of remediating the issue.”
The recall covers products that were stored at the distribution center from the beginning of 2021 to the present. It does not apply to items shipped directly to the stores from distributors or manufacturers. Family Dollar said it was not aware of reports of illness related to the recall.
“Family Dollar is notifying its affected stores by letter asking them to check their stock immediately and to quarantine and discontinue the sale of any affected product,” the company said in its statement. “Customers that may have bought affected product may return such product to the Family Dollar store where they were purchased without receipt.”
The F.D.A. investigation began in January after a consumer complaint and was completed on Feb. 11, the agency said. In its statement, the F.D.A. said that all drugs, medical devices, cosmetics and dietary supplements should be discarded regardless of packaging. Food in undamaged glass or metal cans could still be used if cleaned and sanitized.
Family Dollar is a brand under its parent company, Dollar Tree, a rapidly growing retail behemoth that operates more than 16,000 stores across the United States and Canada.
Like other retailers, Dollar Tree has struggled with freight and supply-chain costs during the pandemic.
Dollar Tree announced in November a plan to raise the prices of most items in all its stores to $1.25 from $1 after a successful test of the new pricing strategy. Company officials called the decision “permanent” and not a response to current market conditions.
The company said that the price increase, which it first announced it would test in September, would help mitigate freight and distribution costs and wage increases, and would allow it to bring back some products that it was no longer able to offer at $1.
Rodent Infestation at Family Dollar Warehouse Leads to Hundreds of Closures
F.D.A. inspectors said that a fumigation of the West Memphis, Ark., distribution center last month revealed more than 1,100 dead rodents. A far-reaching recall has been issued for stores in six states.
The F.D.A. has warned shoppers that some products purchased from Family Dollar stores in six states may be contaminated. Credit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
The value-store chain Family Dollar said on Saturday that it had temporarily closed more than 400 stores after the discovery of a rodent infestation and other unsanitary conditions at a distribution center in Arkansas touched off a far-reaching recall of food, dietary supplements, cosmetics and other products.
A recent Food and Drug Administration inspection of the facility, in West Memphis, Ark., found live and dead rodents “in various states of decay,” rodent droppings, evidence of gnawing and nesting, and products stored in conditions that did not protect against these unsanitary conditions, the agency said in a statement on Friday.
A fumigation of the facility last month revealed more than 1,100 dead rodents, and a review of company records indicated the collection of more than 2,300 rodents from late March to September, “demonstrating a history of infestation,” the agency said. Rodent contamination can cause salmonella and infectious diseases, the F.D.A. said.
Families rely on stores like Family Dollar for food, medicine and other products, and those items should be safe, Judith McMeekin, an associate commissioner in the agency’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, said in the statement.
“No one should be subjected to products stored in the kind of unacceptable conditions that we found in this Family Dollar distribution facility,” she said. “These conditions appear to be violations of federal law that could put families’ health at risk.”
Family Dollar said in a statement that the voluntary recall, which also covers drugs, medical devices and pet food, includes F.D.A.-regulated products that were stored and shipped from the distribution center to 404 stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Kayleigh Campbell, a Dollar Tree spokeswoman, said in an email on Saturday that the company had “temporarily closed the affected stores in order to proficiently conduct the voluntary recall,” and that the stores would reopen as soon as possible.
“We take situations like this very seriously and are committed to providing safe and quality products to our customers,” Ms. Campbell said. “We have been fully cooperating with all regulatory agencies in the resolution of this matter and are in the process of remediating the issue.”
The recall covers products that were stored at the distribution center from the beginning of 2021 to the present. It does not apply to items shipped directly to the stores from distributors or manufacturers. Family Dollar said it was not aware of reports of illness related to the recall.
“Family Dollar is notifying its affected stores by letter asking them to check their stock immediately and to quarantine and discontinue the sale of any affected product,” the company said in its statement. “Customers that may have bought affected product may return such product to the Family Dollar store where they were purchased without receipt.”
The F.D.A. investigation began in January after a consumer complaint and was completed on Feb. 11, the agency said. In its statement, the F.D.A. said that all drugs, medical devices, cosmetics and dietary supplements should be discarded regardless of packaging. Food in undamaged glass or metal cans could still be used if cleaned and sanitized.
Family Dollar is a brand under its parent company, Dollar Tree, a rapidly growing retail behemoth that operates more than 16,000 stores across the United States and Canada.
Like other retailers, Dollar Tree has struggled with freight and supply-chain costs during the pandemic.
Dollar Tree announced in November a plan to raise the prices of most items in all its stores to $1.25 from $1 after a successful test of the new pricing strategy. Company officials called the decision “permanent” and not a response to current market conditions.
The company said that the price increase, which it first announced it would test in September, would help mitigate freight and distribution costs and wage increases, and would allow it to bring back some products that it was no longer able to offer at $1.
Meanwhile, in Cheesehead land Reynold wrap sales up 3000%...
MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.
Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.
Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.
The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.
In Wisconsin, Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker who has allowed vague theories about fraud to spread unchecked, is now struggling to rein them in. Even Mr. Vos’s careful attempts have turned election deniers sharply against him.
“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.”
Although support for the decertification campaign is difficult to measure, it wouldn’t take much to make an impact in a state where elections are regularly decided by narrow margins. Mr. Ramthun is drawing crowds, and his campaign has already revived Republicans’ divisive debate over false claims of fraud in 2020. Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin Republicans were not confident in the state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to an October poll from the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.
“This is just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” said Rob Swearingen, a Republican state representative from the conservative Northwoods. “We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves about what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”
Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state, along with candidates for Congress, has called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.
In Wisconsin, the decertification push has turned Republican politics on its head. After more than a decade of Republican leaders marching in lock-step with their base, the party is hobbled by infighting and it’s Democrats who are aligned behind Gov. Tony Evers, who is seeking a second term in November.
“Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not,” Mr. Evers said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Ramthun, a 64-year-old lawmaker who lives in a village of 2,000 people an hour northwest of Milwaukee, has ridden his decertification push to become a sudden folk hero to the party’s Trump wing. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser, has hosted Mr. Ramthun on his podcast. At party events, he shows off a 72-page presentation in which he claims, falsely, that legislators have the power to declare Wisconsin’s election results invalid and recall the state’s electoral votes.
Mr. Ramthun has received bigger applause at local Republican gatherings than the leading candidates for governor, and last weekend he joined the race himself, announcing his candidacy at a campaign kickoff where he was introduced by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has financed numerous efforts to undermine and overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump offered public words of encouragement.
“Who in Wisconsin is leading the charge to decertify this fraudulent election?” the former president said in a statement.
It did not take long before the state’s top Republicans were responding to Mr. Ramthun’s election conspiracies. Within days, both of his Republican rivals for governor released new plans to strengthen partisan control of Wisconsin’s elections.
During a radio appearance on Thursday, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, the party establishment’s preferred candidate, refused to admit that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election — something she had already conceded last September. Ms. Kleefisch declined to be interviewed.
Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine with backing from the right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, declined in an interview to say whether the election was legitimate, but he said there was “no legal path” to decertifying the results.
Mr. Vos spent nearly an hour Friday on a Milwaukee conservative talk radio show defending his opposition to decertification from skeptical callers.
“It is impossible — it cannot happen,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”
Yet, Mr. Ramthun claims to have the grass-roots energy on his side. On Tuesday, he drew a crowd of about 250 people for a two-hour rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Terry Brand, the Republican Party chairman in rural Langlade County, chartered a bus for two dozen people for the three-hour ride. Mr. Brand in January oversaw the first county G.O.P. condemnation of Mr. Vos, calling for the leader’s resignation for blocking the decertification effort. At the rally, Mr. Brand stood holding a sign that said “Toss Vos.”
“People are foaming at the mouth over this issue,” he said, listening intently as speakers offered both conspiracy theories and assurances to members of the crowd that they were of sound mind.
“You’re not crazy,” Janel Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the Assembly’s elections committee, told the crowd.
One speaker tied Mr. Vos, through a college roommate and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, to the false claims circulating in right-wing media that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on Mr. Trump. Another was introduced under a pseudonym, then promptly announced herself as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
The rally closed with remarks from Harry Wait, an organizer of a conservative group in Racine County called HOT Government, an acronym for honest, open and transparent.
“I want to remind everybody,” Mr. Wait said, “that yesterday’s conspiracies may be today’s reality.”
Mr. Ramthun says he has questioned the result of every presidential election in Wisconsin since 1996. (He does not make an exception for the one Republican victory in that period: Mr. Trump’s in 2016.) He has pledged to consider ending the use of voting machines and to conduct an “independent full forensic physical cyber audit” of the 2020 election — and also of the 2022 election, regardless of how it turns out.
Mr. Ramthun has adopted a biblical slogan — “Let there be light” — a reference to his claim that Mr. Vos is hiding the truth from voters. If Wisconsin pulls back its electoral votes, Mr. Ramthun said, other states may follow.
All of this has become too much for Mr. Vos, who before the Trump era was a steady Republican foot soldier focused on taxes, spending and labor laws.
Mr. Vos has often appeased his party’s election conspiracists, expressing his own doubts about who really won in Wisconsin, calling for felony charges against Wisconsin’s top election administrators and authorizing an investigation into the 2020 election, which is still underway.
Now, even as he draws the line on decertification, Mr. Vos has tried to placate his base and plead for patience. He announced this week the Assembly plans to vote on a new package of voting bills. (Mr. Evers said in the interview on Friday that he would veto any new restrictions.)
“It’s simply a matter of misdirected anger,” he said, of the criticism he’s facing. “They have already assumed that the Democrats are hopeless, and now they are focused on those of us who are trying to get at the truth, hoping we do more.”
Other Republicans in the state are also walking a political tightrope — refusing to accept Mr. Biden’s victory while avoiding taking a position on Mr. Ramthun’s decertification effort.
“Evidence might be out there, that is something other people are working on,” said Ron Tusler, who sits on the Assembly’s elections committee. “It’s too early to be sure but it’s possible we try it later.”
State Senator Kathy Bernier is the only one of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican state legislators who has made a public case that Mr. Trump lost the state fairly, without widespread fraud.
Ms. Bernier, the chairwoman of the State Senate’s elections committee, in November asked the Wisconsin Legislature’s attorneys to weigh in on the legality of decertifying an election — it is not possible, they said. In December, she called for an end to the Assembly’s investigation into 2020. Three weeks later, she announced she won’t seek re-election this year.
“I have no explanation as to why legislators want to pursue voter-fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Ms. Bernier said in an interview. “They should not do that. It’s dangerous to our democratic republic. They need to step back and only speak about things that they know and understand and can do. And outside of that, they should button it up.”
Fringe Scheme to Reverse 2020 Election Splits Wisconsin G.O.P.
False claims that Donald J. Trump can be reinstalled in the White House are picking up steam — and spiraling further from reality as they go.MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.
Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.
Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.
The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.
In Wisconsin, Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker who has allowed vague theories about fraud to spread unchecked, is now struggling to rein them in. Even Mr. Vos’s careful attempts have turned election deniers sharply against him.
“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.”
Although support for the decertification campaign is difficult to measure, it wouldn’t take much to make an impact in a state where elections are regularly decided by narrow margins. Mr. Ramthun is drawing crowds, and his campaign has already revived Republicans’ divisive debate over false claims of fraud in 2020. Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin Republicans were not confident in the state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to an October poll from the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.
“This is just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” said Rob Swearingen, a Republican state representative from the conservative Northwoods. “We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves about what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”
Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state, along with candidates for Congress, has called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.
In Wisconsin, the decertification push has turned Republican politics on its head. After more than a decade of Republican leaders marching in lock-step with their base, the party is hobbled by infighting and it’s Democrats who are aligned behind Gov. Tony Evers, who is seeking a second term in November.
“Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not,” Mr. Evers said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Ramthun, a 64-year-old lawmaker who lives in a village of 2,000 people an hour northwest of Milwaukee, has ridden his decertification push to become a sudden folk hero to the party’s Trump wing. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser, has hosted Mr. Ramthun on his podcast. At party events, he shows off a 72-page presentation in which he claims, falsely, that legislators have the power to declare Wisconsin’s election results invalid and recall the state’s electoral votes.
Mr. Ramthun has received bigger applause at local Republican gatherings than the leading candidates for governor, and last weekend he joined the race himself, announcing his candidacy at a campaign kickoff where he was introduced by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has financed numerous efforts to undermine and overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump offered public words of encouragement.
“Who in Wisconsin is leading the charge to decertify this fraudulent election?” the former president said in a statement.
It did not take long before the state’s top Republicans were responding to Mr. Ramthun’s election conspiracies. Within days, both of his Republican rivals for governor released new plans to strengthen partisan control of Wisconsin’s elections.
During a radio appearance on Thursday, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, the party establishment’s preferred candidate, refused to admit that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election — something she had already conceded last September. Ms. Kleefisch declined to be interviewed.
Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine with backing from the right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, declined in an interview to say whether the election was legitimate, but he said there was “no legal path” to decertifying the results.
Mr. Vos spent nearly an hour Friday on a Milwaukee conservative talk radio show defending his opposition to decertification from skeptical callers.
“It is impossible — it cannot happen,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”
Yet, Mr. Ramthun claims to have the grass-roots energy on his side. On Tuesday, he drew a crowd of about 250 people for a two-hour rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Terry Brand, the Republican Party chairman in rural Langlade County, chartered a bus for two dozen people for the three-hour ride. Mr. Brand in January oversaw the first county G.O.P. condemnation of Mr. Vos, calling for the leader’s resignation for blocking the decertification effort. At the rally, Mr. Brand stood holding a sign that said “Toss Vos.”
“People are foaming at the mouth over this issue,” he said, listening intently as speakers offered both conspiracy theories and assurances to members of the crowd that they were of sound mind.
“You’re not crazy,” Janel Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the Assembly’s elections committee, told the crowd.
One speaker tied Mr. Vos, through a college roommate and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, to the false claims circulating in right-wing media that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on Mr. Trump. Another was introduced under a pseudonym, then promptly announced herself as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
The rally closed with remarks from Harry Wait, an organizer of a conservative group in Racine County called HOT Government, an acronym for honest, open and transparent.
“I want to remind everybody,” Mr. Wait said, “that yesterday’s conspiracies may be today’s reality.”
Mr. Ramthun says he has questioned the result of every presidential election in Wisconsin since 1996. (He does not make an exception for the one Republican victory in that period: Mr. Trump’s in 2016.) He has pledged to consider ending the use of voting machines and to conduct an “independent full forensic physical cyber audit” of the 2020 election — and also of the 2022 election, regardless of how it turns out.
Mr. Ramthun has adopted a biblical slogan — “Let there be light” — a reference to his claim that Mr. Vos is hiding the truth from voters. If Wisconsin pulls back its electoral votes, Mr. Ramthun said, other states may follow.
All of this has become too much for Mr. Vos, who before the Trump era was a steady Republican foot soldier focused on taxes, spending and labor laws.
Mr. Vos has often appeased his party’s election conspiracists, expressing his own doubts about who really won in Wisconsin, calling for felony charges against Wisconsin’s top election administrators and authorizing an investigation into the 2020 election, which is still underway.
Now, even as he draws the line on decertification, Mr. Vos has tried to placate his base and plead for patience. He announced this week the Assembly plans to vote on a new package of voting bills. (Mr. Evers said in the interview on Friday that he would veto any new restrictions.)
“It’s simply a matter of misdirected anger,” he said, of the criticism he’s facing. “They have already assumed that the Democrats are hopeless, and now they are focused on those of us who are trying to get at the truth, hoping we do more.”
Other Republicans in the state are also walking a political tightrope — refusing to accept Mr. Biden’s victory while avoiding taking a position on Mr. Ramthun’s decertification effort.
“Evidence might be out there, that is something other people are working on,” said Ron Tusler, who sits on the Assembly’s elections committee. “It’s too early to be sure but it’s possible we try it later.”
State Senator Kathy Bernier is the only one of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican state legislators who has made a public case that Mr. Trump lost the state fairly, without widespread fraud.
Ms. Bernier, the chairwoman of the State Senate’s elections committee, in November asked the Wisconsin Legislature’s attorneys to weigh in on the legality of decertifying an election — it is not possible, they said. In December, she called for an end to the Assembly’s investigation into 2020. Three weeks later, she announced she won’t seek re-election this year.
“I have no explanation as to why legislators want to pursue voter-fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Ms. Bernier said in an interview. “They should not do that. It’s dangerous to our democratic republic. They need to step back and only speak about things that they know and understand and can do. And outside of that, they should button it up.”
wader
Well-Known Angler
give it up already..................
Another creature that will give Arachnophobes the heeby geebies... Poseidon knows none of those creatures scare me, including Limulus polyphemus, BUT I confess to having jumped straight up on more than one occasion when horny males snuck up and started humping my feet while wading during striper fishing at night...
Horseshoe crabs are little armored vehicles with bright blue blood. For hundreds of millions of years, they’ve been trundling along the ocean floor. In all that time, other mighty creatures have come and gone: dinosaurs, mammoths, terror birds, Neanderthals. The humble horseshoe crab has lived on, looking not that different these days from their forebears in the Mesozoic Era.
“I find their fossil record amazing, fantastic and brilliant,” said Russell Bicknell, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia who studies the crabs’ evolution and development. “I just love that with, realistically, such a tiny tool kit, they’ve managed to do so much.”
But while the horseshoe crab may seem eternal, it has been pulled into the middle of a scientific controversy.
In a paper published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Prashant Sharma, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his colleagues are challenging the idea that horseshoe crabs are on their own very particular and individual branch on the tree of life. Rather, they claim that the animals belong right in the middle of the family tree of the arachnids, the group that includes spiders and scorpions. If their analysis is correct, it throws the roots of the arachnids’ tree into question, and suggests arachnids have a stranger, more complicated evolutionary history than scientists realized.
The new paper is the latest salvo in a debate about the emergence of arachnids. Scientists have traditionally relied on detailed analysis of living and extinct creatures’ bodies to understand evolution. They examined the tips of arachnids’ mandibles, the placement of legs and other features, tracing traits through evolutionary time. The tree they sketched showed a common ancestor of the whole group that crawled ashore more than 600 million years ago. Since that time, almost all arachnids have lived on land (although they might ascend your door frame to catch flying bugs in a web).
But it’s difficult to know what really happened 600 million years ago on the shores of a younger Earth. Arachnids’ ancestors broke into a bevy of new species very suddenly, and discerning which groups diverged first, making their own branches of the tree of life, has always been difficult, said Antonis Rokas, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vanderbilt University.
In recent years, with the rise of genome sequencing, another way to build family trees has become possible. If comparing anatomies was like poring over passenger manifests at Ellis Island to create a genealogy, then this new technique is like evolutionary 23andMe, sorting organisms according to the similarities in their genetics. It can provide a way to verify what earlier methods have found and even make new discoveries.
But, and here’s where the debate comes in, the new trees do not always agree with the old ones. Dr. Sharma and his colleagues failed to find consistent evidence of that shared common ancestor — the root of the traditional arachnid tree — when they built a genome-based tree for a 2014 paper.
An Atlantic horseshoe crab. The animals have not changed dramatically since they emerged hundreds of millions of years ago, and were long seen as their own limb of the tree of life. Credit...Science Photo Library/Getty Images
Instead, the tree suggested it was more likely that arachnids diverged from one another even further back in the past. And they were not a single, closely related group, but separate clusters of species that had been grouped together by scientists. If that were the case, then the horseshoe crabs, which were thought to be mere neighbors of the arachnids, were actually members of the clan.
Dr. Sharma and his colleagues’ 2014 study was small, but in the new study, they drew on genetic data from more than 500 species as well as anatomical data. The results were the same: Arachnids did not cluster together tightly. Horseshoe crabs, as a result, nestled among them.
“In the end we just had to speak that heresy out loud,” Dr. Sharma said.
If arachnids’ common ancestor is actually much deeper in evolutionary history, then their forebears may have crawled on to land more than once. There may have been multiple waves of that startling transition, with gills transforming into lungs and limbs taking on new roles.
“We used to think that particular morphological characteristics or ecological transitions, from land to sea or from sea to land, were very rare,” said Dr. Rokas, who is not an author of the paper. “But we really don’t know for any given lineage how difficult these transitions are.”
Maybe radical change, in other words, is less difficult than we suppose. In this alternate telling of the early days of the arachnids, horseshoe crabs remained comfortably in the water while their relations took their chances on shore, at least two and perhaps three or four separate times over the eons. And if their bodies look similar, Dr. Sharma and his co-authors suggest, perhaps this is because evolution gave them similar solutions to the problem of getting on dry land, ruthlessly honing them into forms that worked.
The team’s 2014 paper was met critically by researchers who disagree with their interpretation. A group of paleontologists and molecular biologists followed up with a paper proposing ways that genetic information could build a tree that brought arachnids back together.
The latest results, still based primarily on genetic data, are difficult to reconcile with what is written in the fossil record, some paleontologists say. They imply a much more convoluted evolutionary path for the arachnids than fossils suggest, Dr. Bicknell said.
Others describe this paper as a way station in science’s slow progression toward the truth.
“Personally, I think it is an interesting finding,” said Jeffrey Shultz, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland who studies arachnid evolution, “but experience shows that results can change when the same data are analyzed by different workers, when new data are added to the mix or when new insights into genomic evolution come to light.”
The new results will certainly lead to debate, said Hannah Wood, a curator and research entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
“But this is how this stuff works,” she said, adding that another group can challenge their hypothesis. “I think eventually we’ll have an answer.”
Where does this leave the horseshoe crab? For now, Dr. Bicknell said, this latest idea of their history is another quirk among many.
“They’re already weird enough as it is — just chuck more fuel on that fire,” he said. “It’s just a case of really, in the family tree, when their weird branch popped off the main stem. When did it happen? And why did it happen? It continues that discussion.”
Act of ‘Heresy’ Adds Horseshoe Crabs to Arachnid Family Tree
A team of researchers say that rather than occupying their own branch in the history of life on Earth, horseshoe crabs are in the same group as spiders and scorpions.Horseshoe crabs are little armored vehicles with bright blue blood. For hundreds of millions of years, they’ve been trundling along the ocean floor. In all that time, other mighty creatures have come and gone: dinosaurs, mammoths, terror birds, Neanderthals. The humble horseshoe crab has lived on, looking not that different these days from their forebears in the Mesozoic Era.
“I find their fossil record amazing, fantastic and brilliant,” said Russell Bicknell, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia who studies the crabs’ evolution and development. “I just love that with, realistically, such a tiny tool kit, they’ve managed to do so much.”
But while the horseshoe crab may seem eternal, it has been pulled into the middle of a scientific controversy.
In a paper published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Prashant Sharma, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his colleagues are challenging the idea that horseshoe crabs are on their own very particular and individual branch on the tree of life. Rather, they claim that the animals belong right in the middle of the family tree of the arachnids, the group that includes spiders and scorpions. If their analysis is correct, it throws the roots of the arachnids’ tree into question, and suggests arachnids have a stranger, more complicated evolutionary history than scientists realized.
The new paper is the latest salvo in a debate about the emergence of arachnids. Scientists have traditionally relied on detailed analysis of living and extinct creatures’ bodies to understand evolution. They examined the tips of arachnids’ mandibles, the placement of legs and other features, tracing traits through evolutionary time. The tree they sketched showed a common ancestor of the whole group that crawled ashore more than 600 million years ago. Since that time, almost all arachnids have lived on land (although they might ascend your door frame to catch flying bugs in a web).
But it’s difficult to know what really happened 600 million years ago on the shores of a younger Earth. Arachnids’ ancestors broke into a bevy of new species very suddenly, and discerning which groups diverged first, making their own branches of the tree of life, has always been difficult, said Antonis Rokas, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vanderbilt University.
In recent years, with the rise of genome sequencing, another way to build family trees has become possible. If comparing anatomies was like poring over passenger manifests at Ellis Island to create a genealogy, then this new technique is like evolutionary 23andMe, sorting organisms according to the similarities in their genetics. It can provide a way to verify what earlier methods have found and even make new discoveries.
But, and here’s where the debate comes in, the new trees do not always agree with the old ones. Dr. Sharma and his colleagues failed to find consistent evidence of that shared common ancestor — the root of the traditional arachnid tree — when they built a genome-based tree for a 2014 paper.
An Atlantic horseshoe crab. The animals have not changed dramatically since they emerged hundreds of millions of years ago, and were long seen as their own limb of the tree of life. Credit...Science Photo Library/Getty Images
Instead, the tree suggested it was more likely that arachnids diverged from one another even further back in the past. And they were not a single, closely related group, but separate clusters of species that had been grouped together by scientists. If that were the case, then the horseshoe crabs, which were thought to be mere neighbors of the arachnids, were actually members of the clan.
Dr. Sharma and his colleagues’ 2014 study was small, but in the new study, they drew on genetic data from more than 500 species as well as anatomical data. The results were the same: Arachnids did not cluster together tightly. Horseshoe crabs, as a result, nestled among them.
“In the end we just had to speak that heresy out loud,” Dr. Sharma said.
If arachnids’ common ancestor is actually much deeper in evolutionary history, then their forebears may have crawled on to land more than once. There may have been multiple waves of that startling transition, with gills transforming into lungs and limbs taking on new roles.
“We used to think that particular morphological characteristics or ecological transitions, from land to sea or from sea to land, were very rare,” said Dr. Rokas, who is not an author of the paper. “But we really don’t know for any given lineage how difficult these transitions are.”
Maybe radical change, in other words, is less difficult than we suppose. In this alternate telling of the early days of the arachnids, horseshoe crabs remained comfortably in the water while their relations took their chances on shore, at least two and perhaps three or four separate times over the eons. And if their bodies look similar, Dr. Sharma and his co-authors suggest, perhaps this is because evolution gave them similar solutions to the problem of getting on dry land, ruthlessly honing them into forms that worked.
The team’s 2014 paper was met critically by researchers who disagree with their interpretation. A group of paleontologists and molecular biologists followed up with a paper proposing ways that genetic information could build a tree that brought arachnids back together.
The latest results, still based primarily on genetic data, are difficult to reconcile with what is written in the fossil record, some paleontologists say. They imply a much more convoluted evolutionary path for the arachnids than fossils suggest, Dr. Bicknell said.
Others describe this paper as a way station in science’s slow progression toward the truth.
“Personally, I think it is an interesting finding,” said Jeffrey Shultz, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland who studies arachnid evolution, “but experience shows that results can change when the same data are analyzed by different workers, when new data are added to the mix or when new insights into genomic evolution come to light.”
The new results will certainly lead to debate, said Hannah Wood, a curator and research entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
“But this is how this stuff works,” she said, adding that another group can challenge their hypothesis. “I think eventually we’ll have an answer.”
Where does this leave the horseshoe crab? For now, Dr. Bicknell said, this latest idea of their history is another quirk among many.
“They’re already weird enough as it is — just chuck more fuel on that fire,” he said. “It’s just a case of really, in the family tree, when their weird branch popped off the main stem. When did it happen? And why did it happen? It continues that discussion.”
Finland skier suffers frozen penis in Olympics mass start race
Finland’s Remi Lindholm needed a heat pack at the end of his race to thaw out a particularly sensitive body part at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
nypost.com
I'm sure there were multiple highly paid, Blue Ribbon Panels assembled for all of this nonsense...
Google’s employees are called Googlers. Amazon’s workers are known as Amazonians. Yahoo’s employees were Yahoos.
So it was a conundrum for employees at Facebook, long known as Facebookers, when the company renamed itself Meta late last year.
The terminology is now no longer in question. At a meeting on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and Meta’s chief executive, announced a new name for his company’s employees: Metamates.
Mr. Zuckerberg introduced the term as part of an overhaul of Meta’s corporate values, which he said needed updating because of the company’s new direction. In October, he took many by surprise by shifting Facebook toward the so-called metaverse, in which different computing platforms are connected to one another across the internet. The move de-emphasized the company’s social networking apps, like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which have been under scrutiny for privacy and data challenges, hateful content and misinformation.
Google’s employees are called Googlers. Amazon’s workers are known as Amazonians. Yahoo’s employees were Yahoos.
So it was a conundrum for employees at Facebook, long known as Facebookers, when the company renamed itself Meta late last year.
The terminology is now no longer in question. At a meeting on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and Meta’s chief executive, announced a new name for his company’s employees: Metamates.
Mr. Zuckerberg introduced the term as part of an overhaul of Meta’s corporate values, which he said needed updating because of the company’s new direction. In October, he took many by surprise by shifting Facebook toward the so-called metaverse, in which different computing platforms are connected to one another across the internet. The move de-emphasized the company’s social networking apps, like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which have been under scrutiny for privacy and data challenges, hateful content and misinformation.
CELLFISH
Well-Known Angler
The politics of the Olympics are horrible… C22…
movetheboat
Well-Known Angler
Biden, Putin Agree In Principle to France’s Summit Proposal
- Summit to be held on condition Russia doesn’t attack Ukraine
- Blinken, Lavrov to discuss details at meeting this week
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin on June 16, 2021.
Photographer: Peter Klaunzer/Pool/Keystone/Getty Images
By
Shiyin Chen
and Justin Sink
February 20, 2022, 8:22 PM ESTUpdated onFebruary 20, 2022, 8:48 PM EST
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOOOOOO
movetheboat
Well-Known Angler
RIGHT...LETS GO TO WAR...FECK IT LOL!
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- 4 min read
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New York Fluked Itself!Fluke Management in 2025: Regulators Got It Wrong Halfway through this season New York anglers...
- george
- Updated:
- 2 min read
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Hunting Stripers and Blues from Rockaway Beach to Moriches InletThe Western Run: Hunting Stripers and Blues from Rockaway Beach to Moriches Inlet By: A Die-Hard...
- george
- Updated:
- 10 min read
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Surf Fishing for Stripers - The East EndThe Eastern Edge: Mastering Montauk to North Fork Waters During the Fall Blitz By Captain Mike...
- george
- Updated:
- 10 min read