Snorkeling Catalina Island

The survivors of recent crashes were sitting at the back of the plane. What does that tell us about airplane safety? [url=https://kra23c.cc]kra cc[/url] Look at the photos of the two fatal air crashes of the last two weeks, and amid the horror and the anguish, one thought might come to mind for frequent flyers. The old frequent-flyer adage is that sitting at the back of the plane is a safer place to be than at the front — and the wreckage of both Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243 and Jeju Air flight 2216 seem to bear that out. https://kra23c.cc kraken darknet onion The 29 survivors of the Azeri crash were all sitting at the back of the plane, which split into two, leaving the rear half largely intact. The sole survivors of the South Korean crash, meanwhile, were the two flight attendants in their jumpseats in the very tail of the plane. So is that old adage — and the dark humor jokes about first and business class seats being good until there’s a problem with the plane — right after all? In 2015, TIME Magazine reporters wrote that they had combed through the records of all US plane crashes with both fatalities and survivors from 1985 to 2000, and found in a meta-analysis that seats in the back third of the aircraft had a 32% fatality rate overall, compared with 38% in the front third and 39% in the middle third. Even better, they found, were middle seats in that back third of the cabin, with a 28% fatality rate. The “worst” seats were aisles in the middle third of the aircraft, with a 44% fatality rate. But does that still hold true in 2024? According to aviation safety experts, it’s an old wives’ tale. “There isn’t any data that shows a correlation of seating to survivability,” says Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation. “Every accident is different.” “If we’re talking about a fatal crash, then there is almost no difference where one sits,” says Cheng-Lung Wu, associate professor at the School of Aviation of the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Ed Galea, professor of fire safety engineering at London’s University of Greenwich, who has conducted landmark studies on plane crash evacuations, warns, “There is no magic safest seat.”

Scientists have identified an estimated 10% of all species on Earth. Here’s what they found in 2024 [url=https://kra23c.cc]kraken войти[/url] A toothy toadstool. A vegetarian piranha with a distinctive mark. And a pygmy pipehorse floating in the Indian Ocean shallows. These wild wonders were among the hundreds of previously unknown species of animals, plants and fungi that scientists named and described for the first time in 2024, expanding our surprisingly limited knowledge of Earth’s diversity. “Scientists estimate that we’ve identified only one-tenth of all species on Earth,” said Dr. Shannon Bennett, chief of science at the California Academy of Sciences, in a statement. https://kra23c.cc kra23 cc “While it is critical to place protections on known threatened species, we must also allocate resources towards identifying unknown species that may be just as important to the functioning of an ecosystem,” Bennett said. Researchers connected to the institution described 138 new species in 2024, including 32 fish. One standout was a pygmy pipehorse named Cylix nkosi. The seahorse relative was originally found in 2021 in the cool temperate waters surrounding the North Island of New Zealand, but the species described this year was discovered in the subtropical waters off South Africa, expanding the known range of this group to the Indian Ocean “South African reefs present notoriously difficult diving conditions with rough weather and intense, choppy waves — we knew we only had one dive to find it,” underwater photographer and marine biologist Richard Smith said in a statement. “This species is also quite cryptic, about the size of a golf tee, but luckily we spotted a female camouflaged against some sponges about a mile offshore on the sandy ocean floor.” The researchers involved in describing the new species chose nkosi as its name. A reference to the local Zulu word for “chief,” the name reflects the species’ crown-like head shape and acknowledges South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province where it was found.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington on Thursday. Leon Neal/Getty Images CNN — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the White House on Thursday could be his final chance to convince a receptive American president of his country’s war aims. [url=https://megaweb-13at.com]megaweb4.com[/url] The precise details of the “victory plan” Zelensky plans to present in separate meetings to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are unknown, having been closely held until they are presented to the American leaders. But according to people briefed on its broad contours, the plan reflects the Ukrainian leader’s urgent appeals for more immediate help countering Russia’s invasion. Zelensky is also poised to push for long-term security guarantees that could withstand changes in American leadership ahead of what is widely expected to be a close presidential election between Harris and former President Donald Trump. The plan, people familiar with it said, acts as Zelensky’s response to growing war weariness even among his staunchest of western allies. It will make the case that Ukraine can still win — and does not need to cede Russian-seized territory for the fighting to end — if enough assistance is rushed in. That includes again asking permission to fire Western provided long-range weapons deeper into Russian territory, a line Biden once was loathe to cross but which he’s recently appeared more open to as he has come under growing pressure to relent. Even if Biden decides to allow the long-range fires, it’s unclear whether the change in policy would be announced publicly. Biden is usually apt to take his time making decisions about providing Ukraine new capabilities. But with November’s election potentially portending a major change in American approach to the war if Trump were to win, Ukrainian officials — and many American ones — believe there is little time to waste. megaweb18.at https://mega555kf7lsmb54yd6etzginolhxxi4ytdoma2rf77ngq5fhfcnid.com Trump has claimed he will be able to “settle” the war upon taking office and has suggested he’ll end US support for Kyiv’s war effort. “Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelensky. There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now. You have a country that has been obliterated, not possible to be rebuilt,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Mint Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday. Comments like those have lent new weight to Thursday’s Oval Office talks, according to American and European officials, who have described an imperative to surge assistance to Ukraine while Biden is still in office. As part of Zelensky’s visit, the US is expected to announce a major new security package, thought it will likely delay the shipping of the equipment due to inventory shortages, CNN previously reported according to two US officials. On Wednesday, the US announced a package of $375 million. The president previewed Zelensky’s visit to the White House a day beforehand, declaring on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly his administration was “determined to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevail in fight for survival.” [url=https://megaweb18at.com]megaweb17.com[/url] “Tomorrow, I will announce a series of actions to accelerate support for Ukraine’s military – but we know Ukraine’s future victory is about more than what happens on the battlefield, it’s also about what Ukrainians do make the most of a free and independent future, which so many have sacrificed so much for,” he said.