One of China’s top police dogs will have a new colleague in its fight against crime: its own clone.
Chinese scientists recently cloned a puppy using the DNA of an award-winning sniffer dog, the South China Morning Post reported.
Kunxun, a two-month-old female puppy, was bred using the genes of the seven-year-old female Huahuangma, known in the city of Puer for cracking multiple cases for the police.
The young Kunming wolfdog is in good health and adjusting well to her new training regimen at the Kunming Police Dog Base in Yunnan province.
The little pooch has also displayed her originator’s skills by having a strong sense of smell and remaining brave in dark or unfamiliar spaces.
Scientists believe that cloning will be a better alternative in preserving genes of unique police dogs, and hope to create a larger number of specimens in the future.
“We hope in the next 10 years, once the technology becomes more sophisticated, to mass clone exceptional police dogs,” the base’s project analyst Wan Jiusheng said.
This is not the first case of a clone canine army, however.
Back in 2007, South Korea introduced cloned dogs for police and military use, and recently Chinese researchers cloned five genetically edited monkeys to test mental illness drugs.
How far in advance to book your flight from the US
US & Mexico 70 Days
Editor's note: WOW Airlines has not operated in California since January, when the airline dropped wide-body planes from the carrier lineup.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Icelandic budget airline WOW Air stopped all its operations on Thursday due to financial trouble, grounding planes and stranding passengers across two continents.
The airline, a small carrier that specialized in ultra-cheap travel between the United States and Europe, told passengers there would be no further flights and advised them to check with other airlines for ways to reach their destinations.
The airline flew to cities including Washington, New York, Paris, London and its Reykjavik hub.
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Its bankruptcy, which highlights how difficult it is for airlines to make money from budget flights across the Atlantic, comes after six months of turbulent negotiations to sell its business. WOW saw deals fall through to sell to its main rival, the national flag-ship carrier Icelandair, and later to Indigo Partners, an American company operating the airline Wizz.
WOW grounded at least six planes in North America that were set to leave late Wednesday from Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Detroit, New York and Baltimore.
In Europe, Reykjavik-bound planes from seven cities — Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt and Copenhagen — did not take off Thursday morning. One airplane from WOW was grounded as collateral by Iceland's airport operator, which reportedly has a $16 million claim for unpaid landing fees against the airline.
American Sean Tinschert and his partner had rushed to the Reykjavik airport after learning the airline had gone under.
"We are trying to figure out how to get home," he told The Associated Press. "We live in Boston, Massachusetts. We've got to work tomorrow morning — so don't really think that is going to happen."
In Berlin, Mary Sapp, a 30-year-old tattoo artist from Portland, Oregon, said she found out her WOW flight from Schoenefeld Airport to Reykjavik was canceled when she arrived at the airport Thursday morning.
"I feel frantic, and my shoulders are tight," she said as she carried a huge black backpack up a flight of stairs. "I am just going to get some food and figure out ... where I am going to stay tonight."
Jamey Fierce, 62, from Toronto, sat at one of the Berlin airport's coffee shops trying to figure out an affordable route to get home, thinking that maybe he could book a flight via Lisbon.
"Not only was the flight cancelled - the airline was cancelled," said Fierce with some humor.
Tourism is Iceland's largest industry and WOW's disappearance is set to have an effect on this summer's high season.
After starting operations in 2012, the airline expanded quickly to 37 destinations and reported up to 60 percent annual growth in passenger numbers. Its revenue per passenger, however, has not kept up and fell by about 20 percent in 2017, according to the last earnings report.
WOWs' troubles have put a spotlight on how difficult it is to make budget travel across the Atlantic work financially because the biggest source of profits on these routes are higher-paying business travelers. Rival Norwegian Air Shuttle, which has also struggled to make profits, recently started offering "premium" budget travel to capture some of that market.
Analysts at investment firm Stifel note that WOW accounted for just 1 percent of air traffic capacity between the U.S. and Europe, but that by offering low prices it put pressure on other airlines to cut fares.
They say that among competitors, United Airlines stands to gain most on U.S. routes from WOW's demise. Icelandair was quick to offer stranded WOW travelers cheap tickets .
"I will never forgive myself for not acting sooner," said WOW founder Skuli Mogensen in a letter to employees Thursday. "WOW was clearly an incredible airline and we were on the path to do amazing things again."
Dear friends if you are walking in the ocean and a rip tide (undertow) grabs you, offer no resistance. It will carry you out a bit and perhaps drop you a couple of miles away. But you will be alive an uninjured. Yesterday morning 4 drunk young people walked into the ocean at Rockaway Beach (Pacifica, California) at two in the morning. They did not have wet suits. A fit 28-year-old man got grabbed by a rip tide. He panicked and resisted. It cost him his life.
Those Fearing
A Syria-Type Civil War In The US Need Only To Look At South Africa 25 Years Ago
April 29, 1994, was a warm and sunny day in
Port Elizabeth South Africa. History was being made that day. South Africa was
having its first all-race election. A quarter of a century ago, I was poor with
a low-level government job and living in a humble residence. It was a national
holiday. I was at home and not working. Around ten in the morning, a 3-Series
BMW pulled up near my residence. A Captain in the South African Army got out of
the car and came to my door. He had a pronounced Afrikaans accent but told me
in English that he was there to take me to vote in this historic election. (How
I got to this point is a story for another blog post.) I went with him and got
into his car. Police and the army were deployed in large numbers. They feared
the worse. I sensed a warm and a relaxed vibe. I was driven to the polling
place. I presented my self and was quickly allowed to vote. All the ballots had
pictures of the various candidates as many new voters could not read and write.
How I voted is private. The army officer returned me to my residence. That
evening there was wild euphoria all over South Africa. Nobody in the world can
throw a party like South Africans do (of all races.) It was one huge party
after another. One African lady said it all as she was being interviewed on South
African Broadcasting Commission: “Finally we will be treated as adults and not
children.” I had been part of an incredible moment in history.
There was a lot of fear of widespread
election violence and an armed insurrection by the Afrikaans minority. It never
materialized. Long before the election, one most-astute South African
journalist made the bold prediction that no armed insurrection would come from
the Afrikaans population. He made the following comment:
“These
people have decent homes and apartments (for the most part.) They eat nice food
and drive nice cars. They enjoy their servants and meals out at good restaurants.
They are not going to give up their comfortable life to go and fight a hopeless
and bloody civil war.”
His prediction was right.
Let us “fast forward” 25 years to today in
the USA. There is a lot of fear that if Donald Trump is removed from office or
voted out of office in 2020, his right wing and well-armed supporters will
start an armed civil war like the one going on in Syria. The statistics are
frightening. There are between 300,000,000 and 600,000,000 guns in the US.
Despite this massive number of guns, 78 % of the American households do not own
a gun. This means that 22% of the US households own all this fire power. One
could draw the inference that most of this 22% minority are strong Trump
supporters. These people include quite a few billionaires who might fund such
an armed insurrection. The Fox News network and other right-wing large media
owners (Rupert Murdock, for example) would give it strong support. Foreign
countries like Saudi Arabia and even Russia might start to support this
rebellion. It is a grim future.
I’m not losing any sleep over this grim
possibility. I think back to South Africa 25 years ago and the prophetic words
of that one very smart journalist: “They are not going to give up their
comfortable lives to participate in a violent civil war they will not win.”
My dear friend Robert Semands commented on people living in recreational vehicles here in Northern California. San Francisco and San Jose now have the highest rents of any cities in the US. A one-bedroom apartment rents for almost $3,700 per month. We live in a ranch-style home with 1,270 square feet. It would sell for up to $1,300,000 now. Salaries are good for a few highly-qualified people. But not that great for many others,.Some people commute 4 hours per day to get to and from work. One shocking statistic is San Jose State University where 13% of the student body is homeless. Imagine if you have a good job with benefits but can no longer afford rent. You face a grueling 4 hour a day commute to find affordable housing or you live in an RV so you can keep your job and the kids can keep their schools.If you have slept in a car at night, you know how cold it gets when you turn off the motor. The same goes for these RV's as they have no hookup to electricity or water. Some kids do have nutrition problems and need help. In places like Germany, the government would help people in this situation relocate to lower cost of living areas. Even California does not do this.
The two bodies were found in the 1100 block of Banyan Way. The police know far more than they are saying. It is not a gas leak. Such information would have been released quickly. If it were a murder suicide, the coroner would allow the release on that information fairly quickly. This is a homicide investigation. It was not a random killing during a break-in or a serial killer at work. The two dead people in that house made someone very mad. I saw a case like this in Port Elizabeth, South Africa back in 1993.
Thought I'd start a new thread instead of tacking this onto one of the many interminable RV posts.
I'm not defending or endorsing children living their parents' semi-nomadic mobile vehicle lifestyle. Also not discussing about how they got to that point.
But, children living like this is not a new thing in this country or any other place in the world. My grandmother and her sisters were teachers in rural America in the 1920's and 1930's. They taught in one room schoolhouses and out of maybe 30 students in ages 6 - 13 years old, only 4 or 5 were from the local farmer population. The rest were the children of transients, laborers or farm workers. Their housing and home life was sketchy to say the least. Barns, sheds, shacks, tents, covered wagons, Model T's.
The kids were often sent to school with just a ball of cornmeal and a jar of water. They fell asleep in class due to hunger in the afternoons. My grandmother and the ladies from their church started the first free hot lunch program in Indiana- maybe in the country - to remedy this lack of children learning due to hunger problem.
What I am saying here that's relevant to Pacifica is that if there are children among the local RV dwellers, they have a bigger need to be in school than you might think. They don't have it easy and didn't make the choice to be in that situation.
It might seem unfair that they get precedence over the children who have a permanent address, but the need is so great for these children. They can't be left to slip through the cracks and basically go feral. That translates to a child being pretty much unprotected. This world isn't very good to unprotected children.
You came into this world naked, helpless and vulnerable.
Nobody gave you any binding promises. Nobody gave you any iron-clad guarantees.
Be as honest as honestly possible.
Respect rules and understand them in detail. Give equal weight to what happens in real life.
Go one step at a time to develop a solid base.
Regardless of how good, how smart,
or how charming you are, this is not a guarantee that you will achieve your goals in life.
Luck will play a big part in your life. You will have bad luck. Three times you will come very close to death. You will "lose it all" a few times.
You will also have moments of great good luck. When you see an incredible opportunity and you know that it's right, go for it with all your heart and soul. "Lay it all right on the line!"
Snapshot: Above, Edda, a pug that officials seized from a family in Germany and then sold on eBay for 750 euros, roughly $850, to cover an unpaid tax bill. On Thursday, a spokesman for the city of Ahlen called it “a pragmatic solution” to an outstanding debt, but the case has prompted outrage from animal rights activists and others.
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