I'd have thanked you sooner but was rushing to finish a project.

D.C.'s stuffed groundhog Potomac Phil is calling for an early spring and six more months of political gridlock.

https://news.yahoo.com/dc-groundhog-potomac-phil-calls-135955203.html


New York City’s Staten Island Chuck made his prediction for an early spring during an event Thursday at the Staten Island Zoo.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/punxsutawney-phil-groundhog-day-2023/507-3ad962b0-e663-43d4-8d25-9681c4af51ed

Birds are returning from the South. Seeds are quickening in the Earth. The green tips of daffodil leaves emerge.

More about Imbolc:

https://democraticunderground.com/12192909

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/us/lakeland-florida

Multiple people were shot Monday afternoon in Lakeland, Florida, according to a statement released by the City of Lakeland.

“At this time we believe there are nine victims, two with critical injuries and seven with non-life-threatening injuries,” the statement said.

According to the statement, officers were called to a location near Iowa Avenue North and Plum Street at approximately 3:43 p.m.

Read more: CNN

BBC Travel
By Karen Gardiner
27th January 2023

The commonly accepted story of horses in North America is that colonisers introduced them to the continent. But there was a surviving native breed of horse when the Spanish arrived.

It was a bright day in December 2021 and snow was lightly falling over Mādahòki Farm, an Indigenous visitor attraction and event space just outside Ottawa, Canada. I was at the Pibón (winter) festival, and the Anishinaabe artist Rhonda Snow stepped on a small stage that still seemed to tremble from the exuberant footsteps of just-departed pow wow dancers. Nationally renowned for her vivid Woodlands-style paintings, Snow was here to talk about her lifelong work preserving the endangered Ojibwe spirit horse; the breed, also known as the Lac La Croix Indian pony, is the only known indigenous horse breed in Canada.

...

She travelled around Indigenous communities and heard many stories of Indigenous peoples' reciprocal relationship with the Ojibwe spirit horse, seeing the animals as guides and teachers. Such as the Métis fishermen who partnered with the horses each winter to haul fish off frozen lakes – although the horses were never domesticated back then, they would use their hooves to create ice fishing holes in return for food and shelter from the fishermen. But, having been culled to near-extinction by European settlers who considered the wild animals a nuisance, the horses themselves were few and far between.

...

In 1977, only four mares remained on an island in Lac La Croix, north-western Ontario. Having deemed the wild animals a health risk, Canadian health officials made plans to slaughter them. But, before they could do so, four Ojibwe men staged a daring rescue. They rounded up the mares, put them on a trailer and spirited them across the frozen lake and over the border to Minnesota, where they were bred with a Spanish Mustang. Careful management and selective breeding has since revived the Ojibwe spirit horse, which now numbers around 180 and is back in Canada.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230126-the-return-of-the-spirit-horse-to-canada

One of four newly discovered tombs at the Saqqara archaeological site south of Cairo

By Kathryn Armstrong
BBC News

Archaeologists say they have found a gold leaf-covered mummy sealed inside a sarcophagus that had not been opened for 4,300 years.

The mummy, the remains of a man named Hekashepes, is thought to be one of the oldest and most complete non-royal corpses ever found in Egypt.

It was discovered down a 15m (50ft) shaft at a burial site south of Cairo, Saqqara, where three other tombs were found.

One tomb belonged to a "secret keeper".

The largest of the mummies that were unearthed at the ancient necropolis is said to belong to a man called Khnumdjedef - a priest, inspector and supervisor of nobles.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64415816

Scientists in Australia have developed an intriguing new technique for removing toxic “forever chemicals” from water. Adding a solution to contaminated water coats the pollutants and makes them magnetic, so they can easily be attracted and isolated.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of chemicals that have been in wide use around the world since the 1950s, thanks to their water- and oil-repelling properties. However, more recently PFAS chemicals have been linked to a concerning number of health problems, including increased risks of diabetes and liver cancer. Worse still, a recent study has found that their levels in rainwater almost everywhere on Earth exceed the EPA’s guidelines, and to cap it all off, these stable molecules are very hard to break down, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.”

Now, researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a technique that could help remove PFAS chemicals from water. The team designed a solution called a magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent which, when added to contaminated water, coats the PFAS molecules. This makes them magnetic, so then it’s a relatively simple process to use a magnet to attract the pollutants and separate them from the water.

In tests with small samples of PFAS-laden water, the team found that the technique could remove over 95% of most PFAS molecules, including over 99% of GenX – a particularly problematic chemical – within 30 seconds.

https://newatlas.com/environment/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-magnetic-removal/

Dolphins are cavorting in the Bronx River of all places for the first time in at least five years, delighting New Yorkers.

They’re a hopeful sign that efforts to clean up the river, long plagued by pollution, are seeing some success, said city officials.

Local authorities also keep the river stocked with fish, which they believe may have lured in the dolphins.

“This is great news — it shows that the decades-long effort to restore the river as a healthy habitat is working,” the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation noted in a tweet with a video of the dolphins. “We believe these dolphins naturally found their way to the river in search of fish.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dophins-new-york-bronx-river-clean-up_n_63cdf71be4b07c0c7dfd58a0

Washington Post
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, January 23, 2023

In the mid-1990s scientists found evidence that Earth’s inner core, a superheated ball of iron slightly smaller than the moon, was spinning at its own pace, just a bit faster than the rest of the planet. Now a study published in Nature Geoscience suggests that around 2009, the core slowed its rotation to whirl in sync with the surface for a time — and is now lagging behind it.

The provocative findings come after years of research and deep scientific disagreements about the core and how it influences some of the most fundamental aspects of our planet, including the length of a day and fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field.

Three thousand miles below the surface, a scorching hot ball of solid iron floats inside a liquid outer core. Geologists believe that the energy released by the inner core causes the liquid in the outer core to move, generating electrical currents that in turn spawn a magnetic field surrounding the planet. This magnetic shielding protects organisms on the surface from the most damaging cosmic radiation.

Don’t panic. The core’s slowing down isn’t the beginning of the end times. The same thing appears to have happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the study authors at Peking University in China suggest it may represent a 70-year cycle of the core’s spin speeding up and slowing down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/01/23/earth-core-slowing/