News Day

 Hadrian’s Wall Christian graffiti, Lead piece etched with religious iconography. A 5th-century chalice covered in religious iconography has been discovered in Northumberland, to the astonishment of archaeologists, who describe it as Britain’s first known example of Christian graffiti on an object. With its complex mass of crosses and chi-rhos, angels and a priestly figure, as well as fish, a whale and ships, it is believed to be without parallel in western Europe. Made of lead and now in 14 fragments, it was unearthed at the  Vindolanda  Roman fort, one of Europe’s foremost archaeological sites, near Hadrian’s Wall, during an excavation that has also discovered the foundations of a significant church of the 5th or 6th century. Dr Andrew Birley, director of Vindolanda excavations, told the  Observer  that finding church foundations inside the Roman stone fort was significant enough, but that uncovering a vessel “smothered both inside and out with Christian icono...

 France birds glue traps, Is the contested French tradition of glue-hunting songbirds. President Emmanuel Macron of France has ordered hunters in his country to stop trapping song birds using glue- this has been an old tradition. Despite the resistance, conservationists have welcomed the beginning of the end of what they see as a barbaric practice from a bygone era. This old hunting tradition known as birdliming which has gradually been eradicated across Europe following the EU’s 1979 Birds Directive. In five departments in the south east, around Marseille and Nice, some 5,000 to 6,000 hunters use glue-covered sticks to trap thrushes and blackbirds in a process they call chasse à la glu. The songbirds are put in cages and used as “callers” to attract fellow wild birds with their melodic chants, thus providing hunters with easy pickings. At the end of the season the birds are, in theory, released back into the wild. Last year French hunters were allowed to trap more than 40,000 song...

 University of Alabama coronavirus, 1,000 students testing positive for COVID-19. Coronavirus  cases are continuing to climb at the University of Alabama, with more than 1,000 students testing positive for COVID-19 since the start of on-campus classes last week. The school's  COVID-19 dashboard  shows that 492 students across their three campuses tested positive for the virus between Tuesday and Thursday, bringing the total number of cases since Aug. 19 — when the fall semester began — to 1,063. Those numbers do not include the 305 students who tested positive prior to the start of on-campus classes. A majority of the cases are at the university's main campus in Tuscaloosa. According to the dashboard, 1,043 students have tested positive since Aug. 19. In a  press release  on Friday, the university said that none of the students who have tested positive have been hospitalized. "Our exposure notification efforts have revealed no evidence of virus transmission...

 Horses killed in France,  Fear and mystery as dozens of horses. A series of attacks on horse and ponies across  France  have left police baffled and struck fear into the country’s equestrian community. Agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said there had been up to 30 attacks, from the mountainous Jura region in the east to the Atlantic coast, in what are thought to have been ritual mutilations. Many have taken place this summer although one attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine Le Point. Most often, an ear – usually the right one – has been cut off, recalling matadors taking trophies in a bullring. “We are excluding nothing,” Mr Denormandie told France-Info on Friday, before heading to a riding club in the Saone-et-Loire region, in east central France, where a horse was attacked a day earlier. “Ears are cut off, eyes removed, an animal is emptied of its blood,” he said, spelling out the injuries suffered by the animals. “All means are ...

 Greece girl unicorn, 3-Year-Old Clinging to Unicorn Float Is Rescued. A Greek ferry came to the rescue after a young girl clinging to an inflatable unicorn toy floated out into open sea. The  dramatic rescue was caught on video  and even earned praise from the Greek Prime Minister, according to the New York Times.  The captain of the ferry who rescued the 3-year-old said he only did what anyone would do. Grigoris Karnesis and the crew from his ferry pulled the little girl, along with her inflatable toy unicorn, from the waters near the port of Rio on Monday. "The child was flabbergasted," he told Skai TV. "She was terrified, and that is why she had grabbed so firmly onto her inflatable." The ferry captain couldn't believe what he was seeing at first and quickly had to maneuver his 331-foot-long ferry next to the toy so someone could get her without toppling the inflatable unicorn,  he recounted to the New York Times . He described how his brother, the shi...

 UCLA researcher arrested amid investigation into alleged China ties (Details). A Chinese national and University of California-Los Angeles researcher has been arrested for allegedly throwing away a damaged hard drive while the FBI was investigating him for transferring sensitive U.S. data to China’s National University of Defense Technology.  The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that 29-year-old Guan Lei "falsely den[ied] his association with the Chinese military" during interviews with federal law enforcement officials. Lei has since admitted that he participated in Chinese military training.  According to authorities, one of Lei's faculty advisors in China also served in the Chinese military.  The Justice Department further alleged that Lei hid digital files from federal law enforcement and lied about having contact with the Chinese consulate during his time in the U.S.  Lei faces one felony count of destruction of evidence, which carries a m...

 Musk Neuralink news pig, This special series explores the evolving relationship. With grudging assistance from a trio of pigs,  Neuralink  co-founder Elon Musk showed off the startup’s state-of-the-art neuron-reading brain implant and announced that the system has received the Food and Drug Administration’s preliminary blessing as an experimental medical device. During today’s demonstration at Neuralink’s headquarters in Fremont, Calif., it took a few minutes for wranglers to get the swine into their proper positions for what Musk called his “Three Little Pigs demonstration.” One of the pigs was in her natural state, and roamed unremarkably around her straw-covered pen. Musk said the second pig had been given a brain implant that was later removed, showing that the operation could be reversed safely. After some difficulty, a third pig named Gertrude was brought into her pen. As she rooted around in the straw, a sequence of jazzy electronic beeps played through the ...

 US Marshals rescue children after a two-week operation. Thirty-nine missing children were rescued after a two-week operation led by the U.S. Marshals Service Missing Child Unit in Atlanta and Macon, Georgia, officials said Friday. U.S. marshals said during “Operation Not Forgotten,” which was conducted along with other officials, 26 children were rescued and the other 13 were located to make sure they were safe. Nine people were arrested. Investigators said they filed charges for alleged crimes related to sex trafficking, parental kidnapping, registered sex offender violations, drugs and weapons possession and custodial interference during the operation. “The U.S. Marshals Service is fully committed to assisting federal, state, and local agencies with locating and recovering endangered missing children, in addition to their primary fugitive apprehension mission,” said Director of the Marshals Service Donald Washington. “The message to missing children and their families is t...

 Sheriff Todd Wright resigns after racist comments recorded. Arkansas County Sheriff Todd Wright has resigned after he was allegedly recorded using racial slurs against black people. The five-minute audio recording began circulating on Facebook this week, according to KATV content partner the  Pine Bluff Commercial . In the recording, a man uses a racial slur nine times after becoming upset that a woman he was with spoke to a black person in a grocery store. The man calls the woman a “n**** lover" and says, “Why you got to holler at f****** n****** when I’m around." Wright's resignation was announced Friday after a special Quorum Court meeting was held to address the recording. Arkansas County Judge Eddie Best said several people spoke during the meeting who knew the sheriff and asked the sheriff to get help. Wright's resignation was effective immediately. But according to Best, Wright will still receive a contract labor check for the next month to help the sher...

 Kanye West Wisconsin lawsuit on the presidential ballot. The campaign for rapper Kanye West filed a lawsuit Friday against the state Elections Commission in a bid to get on the presidential ballot in Wisconsin this November.      The 12-page suit was filed in Brown County Circuit Court.  The state Elections Commission  voted 5-1 last week  to keep West off the ballot because it found that his campaign had filed its nomination papers shortly after the 5 p.m. deadline Aug. 4.   West is running on the Birthday Party ticket with vice presidential candidate Michelle Tidball. Reached Friday afternoon, Michael Curran of West's campaign had no comment. Reid Magney, spokesman for the state Elections Commission, declined to comment. In the suit, West's attorneys focus solely on the issue of whether his campaign team filed its nomination papers on time.  They argue that state Elections Board staff members impeded the West camp...

 Chadwick Boseman tributes after he died on Friday aged 43. Tributes are being paid to US actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Black Panther in the celebrated superhero film set in a fictional African nation, after he  died on Friday aged 43 . "This is a crushing blow," wrote director Jordan Peele. The Black Panther rallying cry "Wakanda Forever" trended online, as celebrities, civil rights activists and fans posted emotional messages. The actor's cancer diagnosis was not publicly known. "What a gentle gifted soul. Showing us all that greatness between surgeries and chemotherapy. This is what dignity looks like," wrote TV star and author Oprah Winfrey. Skip Twitter post by @Oprah Report End of Twitter post by @Oprah The eldest son of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr said Mr Boseman "brought history to life" in his depictions of prominent black individuals including baseball player Jackie Robinson and soul singer James Brown. Skip Twi...

 Chadwick Boseman dead,  Black Panther star dies of cancer aged 43. Actor Chadwick Boseman, who brought  the movie "Black Panther"  to life with his charismatic intensity and  regal performance,  has died. Boseman has battled colon cancer since 2016 and died at home with his family and wife by his side, according to a statement posted on his Twitter account. He was 43. "A true fighter,  Chadwick persevered through it all,  and brought you so many of the films you have come to love so much," the statement said. "From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and several more, all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy." With his role as King T'Challa in the boundary-breaking film "Black Panther," he became a global icon and an inspiring symbol of Black power. That role  was the "honor of  (Boseman's) career," the statement said. Chadwick Boseman is shown as T'Challa...

 Arizona dorm virus wastewater, dorms found higher viral loads in wastewater. The University of Arizona found early signs of COVID-19 in a student dorm this week by testing wastewater and were able to head off an outbreak there, school leaders announced Thursday. Researchers at the school have looked for traces of the virus in wastewater samples taken from the greater Tucson area since March and have gathered samples from 20 buildings on the UA campus since school started. Earlier this week, data collected from the dorms found higher viral loads in wastewater samples taken from Likins Hall. A team led by Dr. Ian Pepper, director of the UA's Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Center, tested the samples five more times to confirm the findings, said UA President Dr. Robert Robbins.  The university on Wednesday tested the entire dorm, about 311 people, and found two positive cases, Robbins said. The two individuals, who were asymptomatic, are now...

 Canada GDP drop COVID, according to Statistics Canada on Friday. Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) fell 11.5 percent in the second quarter this year, following 2.1 percent decline in the first quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Statistics Canada on Friday. Almost every single component of the economy used to calculate GDP was at its lowest point in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the country to carry out widespread shutdowns of non-essential businesses, border closures, and restrictions on travel and tourism. The second quarter decline, the steepest since quarterly data were first recorded in 1961, reflected sharp decreases in household spending, business investment, and international trade. Final domestic demand dropped 11.1 percent, continuing the 1.9 percent drop in the first quarter. Expressed at an annualized rate, real GDP plunged 38.7 percent in the second quarter. The second quarter is largely expected to be the worst quarter in ...

 UK emergency use vaccine, effective coronavirus vaccine. Britain is preparing to revise its laws to allow the emergency use of any effective  coronavirus  vaccine before it is fully licensed — but only if the shots meet required safety and quality standards. In a statement Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government said it was adopting “reinforced safeguards” to allow the country's medicines regulatory agency to grant temporary authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine, provided it meets safety and quality standards. The proposed regulations would allow coronavirus  vaccines  to receive an emergency approval allowing people to be immunized while the full licensing process is being finished. Typically,  vaccines  are only used after the licensing review has been completed, a process which can take several months. "If we develop effective vaccines, it’s important we make them available to patients as quickly as possible, but only once stri...