Some clouds. Low near 60F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..
Some clouds. Low near 60F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph.
FURNAS COUNTY, Neb. (AP) — Authorities in Nebraska are trying to determine who released 16 million gallons of water by opening a dam on an irrigation channel one night this month — and why.
The puzzling water release from the Cambridge Canal reduced the flow to some 18,000 acres of crops and jeopardized expensive irrigation equipment, according to Brad Edgerton, the general manager of the Frenchman Cambridge Irrigation District that runs the nearly 48-mile-long waterway.
The canal was flowing at its normal rate of 150 cubic feet per second when Edgerton checked on his computer on the night of Aug. 13, but by the following morning the flow had been cut in half. Something had happened at the canal’s dam near the town of Cambridge, about 200 miles west of Lincoln.
Edgerton drove there and discovered that someone had wrenched open the dam’s two 10-foot sluice gates, sending the precious water down the Republican River. He estimates that about 50-acre-feet of water was lost during the roughly eight hours that the gates were open, and that the water was worth around $2,600 based on the $52-per-acre-foot price that farmers pay.
“It was an unfortunate situation. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t a lot of water, but it was an inconvenience,” he said.
Edgerton scrambled to notify farmers downstream about the problem, called the sheriff and contacted the Bureau of Reclamation to get more water released from the Harry Strunk Reservoir to replenish the canal.
Furnas County Sheriff Doug Brown told the Lincoln Journal Star that he could only guess why someone would release the water.
“There are a lot of different scenarios and theories,” he said. “But there is no evidence to lean one way or another, so all theories are still viable.”
Edgerton said he thinks the sheriff is following up on every rumor he hears but so far is stumped.
“I don’t believe they’re any closer to solving it,” he said Thursday.
It’s not clear if any state law governs the act of releasing canal water back into a river — or provides penalties — but Furnas County Attorney Patrick Calkins said he’ll try to find one if the sheriff does find out who grabbed the hand crank wheel from where it hung nearby and used it to open the gates.
“If we get information on who did this, I’d look at charging that person with something,” Calkins said.
CHONGQING, China (AP) — The city of Chongqing, dubbed one of China's four "furnace" cities, is known for both soaring temperatures and spicy cuisine — notably its hotpot, a peppery bubbling tabletop broth into which diners dunk bite-size pieces of food to cook and eat.
The inland metropolis on the Yangtze River has the perfect escape to enjoy hotpot, even in what has been a summer of unusually stifling heat: World War II-era air raid shelters, converted into restaurants, where the temperature is naturally cooler.
Locals call it "cave hotpot."
Chongqing was the temporary capital of China during World War II, as a Japanese invasion drove the government out of the then-capital, Nanjing, and occupied eastern China. Leader Chiang Kai-shek, the military, foreign diplomats and others set up in what was then a remote city in the southwest.
At the sound of air raid sirens, residents crowded into the often dark shelters dug into the hilly cityscape to protect people and military weapons. Thousands died in the Japanese aerial bombing attacks.
Today, the stone arch doorways of the former shelters still dot the city. Some have become cafes and mahjong parlors and others, restaurants.
Red Chinese characters hang over one entrance, its stonework half-hidden by a refrigerated drinks display case and stacked up plastic chairs. The characters read: "Cave Pavilion Hotpot. Founded 1989."
Inside, tables and chairs line two long and narrow tunnels connected by a corridor. A starry night sky has been painted on the semicircular roof to reinforce a feeling of coolness. A painting of a World War II fighter plane hangs on the wall.
Diners drop beef tripe, meat, fish and vegetables into a bubbling broth filled with floating red chili peppers and lip-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. A non-spicy broth is also available — in a smaller container.
"We stay away from the summer heat in these air raid shelters," said Tang Ronggang, as wisps of steam rose in front of his face from the hotpot on his table. "It's cool in here, a good place to stay in summer."
Particularly this summer, which has seen what meteorologists are calling China's strongest heat wave since the government began recording rainfall and temperature 61 years ago. High temperatures have persisted for more than two months, topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in many places.
Shopping malls have closed in Chongqing for most of the daytime to conserve power. Wide swaths of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, which meet in the city, have dried up, drawing people to the exposed riverbed. The extended heat and drought is blamed on a high-pressure system parked over western Russia that is also causing this summer's heatwaves in Europe.
Chongqing, immediately east of Sichuan, was part of the province until the city and the surrounding area was broken off administratively in 1997.
Some date the city's hotpot tradition to the 16th century, when porters ate meat and vegetables boiled with fiery spices after a hard day's work on the docks on the Jialing River. The dish moved into abandoned air raid shelters in the 1970s, giving birth to a new tradition, the cave hotpot.
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Firefighters in Britain conducted an unusual rescue when a caller reported a man who needed help extracting his hand from the back of a sofa.
The Stapleford Fire Station in England said in a Facebook post that a crew responded Tuesday night "to a report of a male with his hand trapped down the back of a sofa."
The post said firefighters were able to help the man extract his hand. He was not seriously injured, but sustained "slight reddening to his hand," the post said.
"It really isn't just fires, I am pleased we were able to help the male without hurting him further or damaging his sofa," firefighter Gavin Wilson said in the Facebook post.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man who smuggled more than 1,700 wild animals into the United States, including 60 reptiles hidden in his clothing, pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges.
Jose Manuel Perez, 30, of Oxnard, entered pleas to two counts of smuggling and a charge of wildlife trafficking.
Prosecutors said that from 2016 to this February, Perez and his accomplices used social media to arrange to smuggle animals from Mexico and Hong Kong. Most were reptiles and included Yucatan box turtles, Mexican box turtles, baby crocodiles and Mexican beaded lizards, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
It is illegal to import the animals without permits under an international treaty on the trade of endangered species, the DOJ said.
Perez paid accomplices a crossing fee to drive animals from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, where he had them shipped to his family's Ventura County home and resold them to customers throughout the U.S., authorities said.
He also made some three dozen trips to Mexico himself to pick up animals, and on Feb. 25 he was arrested while trying to enter the U.S. with 60 reptiles hidden in bags of his clothing, prosecutors said. Three of the reptiles died.
The smuggled reptiles were worth about $739,000, authorities estimated.
Perez fled to Tijuana in June while out on bond but was quickly captured and returned to the U.S. He could face up to 20 years in federal prison for each smuggling count when he's sentenced on Dec. 1.
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A New Jersey woman was awarded a Guinness World Records title when the organization verified her collection of nearly 700 pizza-related items was the largest in the world.
Telina Cuppari of Kenilworth said she received word this week from Guinness World Records verifying that she is now the holder of the record for the largest collection of pizza-related items.
Guinness said 669 items from Cuppari's collection qualified for the record. The number was enough to take the record from Philadelphia man Brian Dwyer, whose collection was tallied at 561 items in 2011.
Cuppari posted a video to YouTube showing off her collection, which includes pizza boxes, stickers, books, towels, clothing items, toys and kitchen utensils.
The collector said she is still regularly acquiring new items and hopes to eventually break her own record.
(Sky News) Taylor Swift's songwriting is to be the subject of a new literature course at a Texas university.
The course - The Taylor Swift Songbook - will fill a blank space in the line-up at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) from this autumn.
It means the pop megastar's songs will be "read" alongside other UK and US literary giants such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Keats, and other artists students will hope to know all too well by the end of their studies.
The course will use "the songwriting of pop music icon Taylor Swift to introduce literary critical reading and research methods-basic skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines," according to a description on the UTA website.
"Focusing on Swift's music and the cultural contexts in which it and her career are situated, we'll consider frameworks for understanding her work, such as poetic form, style, and history among various matters and theoretical issues important to contextualisation as we practice close and in-depth reading, evaluating secondary sources, and building strong arguments," it adds.
For those who feel ready for it, preliminary texts include albums Red (Swift's Version), Lover, Folklore and Evermore.
UTA follows in the footsteps of New York University (NYU), which previously helped fans fulfil their wildest dreams by offering a course on Swift as a music entrepreneur, and the various pop and country songwriters that helped shape her work.
The singer boosted her reputation by receiving an honorary doctor of fine arts from NYU earlier this year.
The new course also comes after a separate university in Texas announced it will be offering a course based on the work of Harry Styles from 2023.
Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture will be on offer at Texas State University Honours College from next spring.
It will focus on the pop star's work in music and film to "understand the cultural and political development of the modern celebrity".
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Utility officials in California's San Diego County said a power outage affecting more than 14,000 customers was caused by a bird that flew into substation equipment.
San Diego Gas & Electric said more than 14,000 customers lost power for more than 90 minutes Wednesday morning when a bird collided with electrical equipment at a substation in La Mesa.
Officials said power was restored by 10:10 a.m.
The type of bird involved in the incident was not identified by the company.
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A couple's honeymoon was cut short this summer after the husband allegedly left his new wife to solicit a prostitute, authorities said.
Sheriff Chad Chronister said Paul Turovsky, 34, was among the 176 people arrested following a months-long operation targeting human trafficking in Hillsborough County.
While on his honeymoon, Chronister said Turovsky answered an ad from an undercover detective posing as a prostitute. Chronister said the newlywed left his wife at their hotel and went to the undercover location, where he was arrested.
"We all probably have questions about how long this marriage lasted, but I think the only question here, with it ending to quickly, as a wedding guest, was it too late to get the gifts that they gave returned back to them?" Chronister said.
The investigation, which netted 176 arrests in total, focused on men soliciting adult prostitutes and also those looking for sex with underage victims. The sheriff's office said most of the sting suspects were facing charges related to solicitation of prostitution.
The sheriff's office said it arrested ten "Johns" who had inappropriate conversations or shared inappropriate pictures and videos with undercover detectives who they thought were minors.
Chronister said it was "disturbing" to see how many men wanted to solicit sex from undercover female detectives.
"Sometimes the demand was so overwhelming that we had to go purchase a second, sometimes a third hotel room, because they would all show up at once," the sheriff said.
Detectives also found two missing teens who had traveled from Massachusetts to Tampa with two of the suspects. One was found with an adult, sleeping in a vehicle at a grocery store, and the other was found at a hotel with one of the alleged traffickers, according to Chronister.
"We believe these two individuals, these two men are responsible for trafficking many more women," Chronister said. "I'm not able to say more without jeopardizing it the investigation."
The teens, ages 16 and 17, were taken into protective custody and will be reunited with their parents. Three suspects were arrested in that case, Chronister said.
The agency partners with the local organization, Selah Freedom, offering victims of human trafficking services, housing and support.
(CNN) Many people in the northern hemisphere have spent the summer reaching for a boozy drink at the end of the day to take the edge off the scorching, dry heat. It turns out that a tipple may be just what plants need too.
A peer-reviewed study published Thursday in the journal Plant and Cell Physiology suggests that ethanol -- or alcohol -- can help plants survive in times of drought, even for as long as two weeks without water.
When plants are deprived of water, they naturally produce ethanol. Although the reasons for its production are unknown, it led researchers from the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan to theorize that giving alcohol to plants may protect them from dying in a drought.
"The discovery came from the process of searching for compounds that make plants resistant to stress," Motoaki Seki, the study's lead author told CNN.
The findings are not just useful for the world's gardens, but also for farms growing vital crops like rice and wheat. Drought-proofing staple crops could help alleviate food insecurity, which is an issue affecting many parts of the world right now, exacerbated by heat waves, Russia's war in Ukraine and supply chain issues.
The researchers said that ethanol was a "useful and simple" way to increase food production all over the world in times of drought or water scarcity.
To come up with their findings, the researchers grew wheat and rice plants, regularly watering them, and then added ethanol to the soil in one group of plants over three days. They then deprived both groups of water for two weeks and found that drunk plants fared better than sober ones. Around 75% of the ethanol-treated wheat and rice plants survived after rewatering, while less than 5% of the untreated plants did.
"The external application of ethanol to plants would be a useful, simple and less expensive agricultural method to enhance drought tolerance in various plants," Seki said, as genetic modification of plants would not be needed.
But, he warned that the ethanol needed to be used sparingly, as "higher concentration of ethanol inhibits plant growth." In other words, don't try this at home.
The study also looked at how ethanol protects a plant. Using arabidopsis, a small plant commonly used in experiments, the researchers discovered that when ethanol-treated specimens were deprived of water, tiny openings on the leaves surface called stomata, closed up, retaining water and heat.
Seki and his colleagues studied arabidopsis' gene expression and found that the ethanol-treated plants started behaving as if they were experiencing drought, even before they were actually deprived of water.
This gene expression gives the plants a head start in preparing for a drought, Seki explained, adding that the ethanol is also used by plants to make the sugars needed to produce energy.
Seki told CNN that he and his team will soon begin testing ethanol on plants in real fields.
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.