Elephants dying of hunger, thirst in drought-hit Zimbabwe

Agencies
October 24, 2019

A big relief operation is underway at one of Zimbabwe's best-known game parks where elephants are starving to death because of drought.

Almost all water pans in the Mana Pools National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have dried up, reported Efe news.

Dave McFarland, a safari operator and coordinator of the new "Feed Mana" operation said: "We saw four calves that never made it (in the last 10 days)."

"There's just nothing for these animals to eat. It's unbelievable."

Precise figures of animal deaths are hard to tally because of the vast distances within the 2,000 km squared park, which is popular with local and international tourists.

Zimbabwe, as with much of southern Africa, has seen less rainfall than usual this year. More than five million people, a third of the country's population, will need food aid before the next harvest is due in April.

Elephants are suffering too, particularly the youngest. Herds are fracturing as parents try to protect their young.

"They've all split up as individuals and the mothers walk with a calf 200 meters behind them on this hard journey, just looking for food," said McFarland. "Sometimes the calves lag behind too far and they get lost, the mothers can't find them, it's not good."

Five orphaned elephant calves have so far been rescued in the park and taken to a rehabilitation centre in Harare.

Volunteers and local donors working under the "Feed Mana" banner, which include the Veterinarians for Animal Welfare Zimbabwe, have over the past few weeks delivered around 9,000 bales of hay to the game park on the back of 30-tonne trucks.

With rains still 6-8 weeks away, elephants and other game have now congregated on a 40 kilometres squared flood plain in Mana, where there is still some grazing left.

Elephants are also starving in Hwange, the national park in the west of the country made famous by Cecil the Lion in 2015.

The Bhejane Trust, a conservation group that works in Hwange, has recorded broken elephant tusks near water holes. That could indicate that fights have broken out between big bulls over scarce water in the pans.

Water does not occur naturally in Hwange and needs to be artificially pumped into troughs and pans dotted around the park, which is seven times the size of Mana Pools.

But the park's 50,000-strong elephant population is putting pressure on scarce resources, said Trevor Lane of the Bhejane Trust, which helps to maintain the pumps. Elephants from Botswana are crossing over too to look for scarce water.

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News Network
May 6,2020

Hyderabad, May 6: Away from city lights, two hours before Sunrise, people in India and across the world can witness Annual Meteor Shower called Eta Aquarids till May 28.

Observed since time immemorial, Meteor shower are commonly known as shooting stars which are nothing but dust flakes of comet/asteroid entering earth atmosphere.

This Annual Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower peaked on Wednesday at 02.30 am on Wednesday whereas presence of Full Moon was an obstacle outshining bright streaks of lights of this meteor shower zipping across the South Eastern sky.

As this meteor shower is active till May 28, people can still watch this celestial spectacle in early morning every day, Planetary Society of India (PSI) Director N Sri Raghunandan Kumar interacting with UNI said.

As per International Meteor Organization (IMO), 50 meteors per hour are expected to be seen on day of peak today. And this number would vary as days pass on till May 28 while earth passes through dust cloud of comet debris in its orbit.

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Agencies
January 3,2020

Giving each and every app access to personal information stored on Android smartphones such as your contacts, call history, SMS and photos may put you in trouble as bad actors can easily use these access to spy on you, send spam messages and make calls anywhere at your expense or even sign you up for a premium "service", researchers from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky have warned.

But one can restrict access to such information as Android lets you configure app permissions. 

Giving an app any of these permissions generally means that from now on it can obtain information of this type and upload it to the Cloud without asking your explicit consent for whatever it intends to do with your data.

Therefore, security researchers recommend one should think twice before granting permissions to apps, especially if they are not needed for the app to work. 

For example, most games have no need to access your contacts or camera, messengers do not really need to know your location, and some trendy filter for the camera can probably survive without your call history, Kaspersky said. 

While decision to give permission is yours, the fewer access you hand out, the more intact your data will be.

Here's what you should know to protect your data.

SMS: An app with permission to send and receive SMS, MMS, and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) push messages, as well as view messages in the smartphone memory will be able to read all of your SMS correspondence, including messages with one-time codes for online banking and confirming transactions.

Using this permission, the app can also send spam messages in your name (and at your expense) to all your friends. Or sign you up for a premium "service." You can see and conrol which apps have these rights by going to the settings of your phone.

Calendar: With permission to view, delete, modify, and add events in the calendar, prying eyes can find out what you have done and what you are doing today and in the future. Spyware loves this permission.

Camera: Permission to access the camera is necessary for the app to take photos and record video. But apps with this permission can take a photo or record a video at any moment and without warning. Attackers armed with embarrassing images and other dirt on you can make life a misery, according to Kaspersky.

Contacts: With permission to read, change, and add contacts in your address book, and access the list of accounts registered in the smartphone, an app can send your entire address book to its server. Even legitimate services have been found to abuse this permission, never mind scammers and spammers, for whom it is a windfall.

This permission also grants access to the list of app accounts on the device, including Google, Facebook, and many other services.

Phone: Giving access to your phone means permission to view and modify call history, obtain your phone number, cellular network data, and the status of outgoing calls, add voicemail, access IP telephony services, view numbers being called with the ability to end the call or redirect it to another number and call any number.

This permission basically lets the app do anything it likes with voice communication. It can find out who you called and when or prevent you from making calls (to a particular number or in general) by constantly terminating calls. 

It can eavesdrop on your conversations or, of course, make calls anywhere at your expense, including to pay-through-the-nose numbers, Kaspersky warned.

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Washington D.C: One of the greatest spectacles of modern art is still thriving in the Australian outback as confirmed by satellite imagery of NASA. The Marree Man is a massive geoglyph depicting an aboriginal hunter, that spans over 2.6 miles in the Southern Australian region.

Discovered by a pilot in 1998, its origin still remains a mystery even to this date.

The Marree Man was given a new lease of life in 2016 when a group of people from the neighboring town of Marree plowed its lines to avert its fading due to erosion.

After NASA shared the image of the art-work that was taken in June, the efforts of the good samaritans turned out to be a total success, reported CNN Travel.

The restoration team believes that the refurbished Marree Man would last longer than its original version.

According to NASA, "They [the team] created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. They hope that eventually, the man will turn green."

In a previous article, CNN reported that an entrepreneur by the name of Dick Smith took upon himself to unravel the geoglyph's mystery in 2016. His team combed through all the available evidence but couldn't find anything conclusive.

In 2018 he even offered a 5,000 Australian dollar reward for anyone who knows the identity of its creator.

Nobody turned up with an answer but it was speculated that unknown artist lives in Alice Springs or even might be an American.

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