Mad Minute stories from Wednesday, April 28th | National | khq.com – KHQ Right Now
(AP) Missing out on Thin Mints in the pandemic? A Google affiliate is using drones to deliver Girl Scout cookies to people’s doorsteps in a Virginia community.
The town of Christiansburg has been a testing ground for commercial delivery drones operated by Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s corporate parent Alphabet.
Now the company is adding the iconic boxed cookies to the more mundane drugstore offerings, FedEx packages and locally-made pastries, tacos and cold brew coffees it’s been hauling to a thinly populated area of residential subdivisions since 2019.
Wing said it began talking to local Girl Scout troops because they’ve been having a harder time selling cookies during the pandemic, when fewer people are out and about. The organization jumped on the new twist to its skills-building mission.
“I’m excited that I get to be a part of history,” said 11-year-old Gracie Walker, of the Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline Troop 224. “People are going to realize and be, like, ‘Hey, this is better for the environment and I can just walk outside in my pajamas and get cookies.’”
It’s the latest attempt to build public enthusiasm for futuristic drone delivery as Wing competes against Amazon, Walmart, UPS and others to overcome the many technical and regulatory challenges of flying packages over neighborhoods.
Federal officials started rolling out new rules in mid-April that will allow operators to fly small drones over people and at night, potentially giving a boost to commercial use of the machines. Most drones will need to be equipped so they can be identified remotely by law enforcement officials.
The 10-pound Wing drone that made the first deliveries in Christiansburg in fall 2019 is already an artifact held at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Whether it will go down in history as a revolutionary innovation or a utopian flop remains to be seen.
Amazon has also been working on drone delivery for years. In 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in a TV interview that drones would be flying to customer’s homes within five years, but that deadline has long since passed. The company did win government approval to deliver packages by drones last August, but Amazon said it was still testing them and hasn’t started delivering goods to shoppers yet.
David Vos, an aerospace engineer who led Google’s Wing project until 2016, said he has been surprised that drone delivery ventures haven’t taken off more quickly.
“I thought it was completely doable to be up and going by 2021,” Vos said. While he still thinks drone technology is getting closer to delivering the size, weight and power needed to transport goods safely in populated places, Vos said the tech industry also needs a cultural shift.
In particular, he said, it needs to bring on people from the traditional aviation industry who have experience building “safety-critical systems” that meet strict performance standards.
Wing’s drones are able to navigate autonomously — without a human pilot controlling them remotely — and are powered by two forward propellers on their wings and 12 smaller vertical propellers. When a drone reaches its destination, it hovers above the front lawn as a tether releases to drop the package.
“It was so smooth and it didn’t shake,” said Walker, who, before her troop added drones to its sales strategy, would don a mask and set up a cookie booth outside a home improvement store. “They look like a helicopter but also a plane.”
There’s not much evidence that consumers have been clamoring for drone delivery, and many have expressed privacy, safety or nuisance concerns when asked to imagine the noisy machines over their homes. Wing has objected to some of the FAA’s new drone rules on privacy grounds, saying the remote ID requirement could allow observers to snoop on delivery routes online.
But in a small survey of Christiansburg residents by researchers at nearby Virginia Tech that Wing helped fund, most townspeople appeared to be content with the drones.
“One of the reasons is because Virginia Tech is here and there’s an engineering culture of trying new things,” said Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of science, technology and society who conducted the Virginia Tech survey. “And the suburban setup is easiest for drone delivery.”
That might not be the case for much denser places, he added. “Manhattan would be tough.”
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April 28 (UPI) — A California family said they are dealing with an unusual infestation after hundreds of migratory birds swooped down their chimney and took up residence inside the house.
A woman who asked to be identified only as Kerri said she returned to her Torrance home with her husband and their child April 21 to discover birds flying around inside the house.
Kerri captured video showing dozens of birds swooping down into the home through her chimney.
“It’s so hard to explain. If you don’t see it with your own eyes, you’d never believe it,” Kerri told KTLA-TV.
Kerri said the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office referred her to county animal control, but officials told her to just leave her doors open and allow the birds to leave on their own.
She said the birds don’t appear to want to leave, and have been making a mess of the home.
“You couldn’t walk in any spot in the living room, the kitchen and the hallway without stepping on bird droppings,” Kerri said.
The birds are believed to be Vaux’s swift, a species known for roosting in chimneys in large groups.
Firefighters in Montecito, Calif., responded to a similar problem Sunday evening when a homeowner reported about 1,000 birds that swooped into their chimney and became stuck behind the fireplace cover.
The Montecito Fire Department said the birds were left overnight to see if they would fly back up the chimney on their own, but returned Monday to find that the birds hadn’t moved.
Firefighters and animal control officers ended up designing a chute system to allow the birds to make their way from the fireplace to the back door.
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April 28 (UPI) — Animal rescuers in Britain said an Ikea shopper returned to their home and discovered a potted plant they purchased at the furniture store had a stowaway — a gecko lizard.
The RSPCA said the shopper bought the plant from the Ikea store in Exeter and returned home to find a gecko was hiding among the leaves.
RSPCA Animal Rescue Officer Clara Scully responded to the home to safely capture the lizard.
“A member of the public got more than they bargained for with this plant. This little fella was hidden in the leaves! He is now safe awaiting transfer for his new home by one of our exotic officers,” Scully said.
The RSPCA said the gecko is native to warmer climates and would likely not survive in the wild in Britain.
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LODI TOWNSHIP, MI – A property line dispute between neighbors in Southeast Michigan led to the construction of a 250-foot-long wall of poop – or a “compost fence,” FOX 2 Detroit reports.
The cow manure is normally spread out on the farmer’s field next door, said Wayne Lambarth, who owns the adjacent property in Lodi Township, Washentaw County. Now, the turds are piled as a smelly reminder of a property line dispute from last year.
The stench permeates Lambarth’s rental house near the property line, the report said. Complaints have been lodged but local officials say there’s nothing they can do since the feces is on the farmer’s property.
“It’s not a poop wall,” the farmer told FOX 2. “It’s a compost fence.”
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April 28 (UPI) — Police and animal control officers were called to a bridge in Texas to remove an unusual traffic hazard — an alligator sunning itself in the road.
The Harris County Precinct 8 Constable’s Office, the Baytown Police Department and Texas State Police animal control officers responded in the late morning Wednesday to reports of an alligator blocking Highway 14 traffic on the Fred Hartman Bridge.
Responders said it took five officers to wrestle the gator, bind it with tape and load the reptile into a pickup truck.
The gator was transported to the water under the bridge and set free, authorities said.
The La Porte Police Department said alligators have been known to wander into the road in the past, but Wednesday’s incident was the first time in recent memory that one of the animals has been seen on the bridge.
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April 28 (UPI) – Drivers on a Chicago highway got out of their vehicles to remove multiple mattresses that were blocking lanes of traffic.
The mattresses were spotted Wednesday morning in the inbound lanes of Interstate 290, the Eisenhower Expressway, and multiple vehicles were seen driving around the obstacles blocking the center lanes.
A driver ended up stopping his car to start dragging the mattresses to the side of the road, and he was soon joined by two other drivers.
The mattresses were moved to the left shoulder of the road.
The origins of the road obstructions were unclear.
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(CNN) Walmart is coming after Kanye West for releasing a proposed logo design that the retailer says too closely resembles the company’s own logo.
The retail giant filed a notice of opposition on April 21 to the US Patent and Trademark Office, challenging a logo trademark application that was submitted by Kanye West’s apparel brand, Yeezy. “Walmart believes the logo design depicted in the Yeezy Application is confusingly similar to Walmart’s well-known spark logo design,” according to a letter the company provided to CNN Business.
Both logos resemble a sun: Walmart’s logo has thick lines that look like sun rays and Yeezy’s proposed logo has lines made up of a set of dots that also resemble sunlight.
According to Walmart’s letter, the company communicated with Yeezy in July and August 2020 and again in each of the first three months of this year. “To date, we have not received any conclusive information from Yeezy regarding the planned use or any cooperation from Yeezy in order to find common ground,” the letter states.
Walmart has been using the sun-like logo since 2007, and Yeezy filed documents for its proposed logo in January 2020.
Kanye West has earned a lot of money from his fashion company. The rapper turned shoe mogul is now reportedly worth $6.6 billion, and the vast majority of his wealth is tied up in his apparel businesses. West’s Yeezy sneaker partnership with Adidas and his clothing line with the Gap are worth a combined $3.2 billion to $4.7 billion, according to a UBS report published in February.
The Yeezy team has not yet replied to a CNN Business request for comment.
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Passengers leave things behind on trains all the time, with conductors frequently finding umbrellas, phones, even laptops that had been forgotten. But Thursday’s haul on the 6:11 train from Penn Station to Port Washington was one for the record books.
Inside a bag that was left behind, Long Island Rail Road Conductor Jonathan Yellowday found a jewelry portfolio containing 36 precious diamond ring settings — valued at around $100,000.
“It almost didn’t seem real. I thought, this can’t be what it seems,” Yellowday said. Having been on the job for eight years, he thought he had seen it all. But this blew him away.The diamonds belonged to a passenger who works as a jeweler, who did not want to be identified, but did want to share his story and his eternal gratitude to the honest conductor.
“I started searching the house, I thought I brought it home. I started retracing my teps and remembered I left it on the train,” the jeweler said.
As it turns out, Yellowday had already returned the setting to MTA Police at Penn Station. There, they arranged for the jeweler to pick up his precious belongings on Friday. He thanked everyone who helped bring back the diamonds, and was happy to meet the man who made it all possible.
LIRR President Phil Eng gave Yellowday a commendation, and said that lucky for the jeweler, Yellowday did the right thing. The conductor said there was never a doubt what he needed tp do, and his mother told him the same.
“She said, you know what, good karma is going to come your way. She’s a very religious person, and she’s all about what you put out there comes back to you,” Yellowday said.
In addition to being recognized for his good deed, Yellowday can expect a gift in the future: The jeweler promised to craft a piece for him to wear to express his gratitude.
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(VICE) Toto and Poko, a toucan couple at the Maruyama zoo in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo, have been sharing a home since 2013. After reaching sexual maturity in 2016, the birds were expected to reproduce. Every year, zookeepers would discover two or three eggs in their cage, but none have hatched.
To encourage reproduction, the puzzled zookeepers played the part of the mood maker. They built them bigger nests and changed their diets, but still no chicks. In fact, the zoo staff never once saw the birds mount each other, although they assumed they could have done it while no one was watching.
It wasn’t until 2020 that the zookeepers decided to run a DNA test on the toucans. Earlier this month, the zoo announced that Toto, the bigger toucan and what was assumed to be the male, was a female like Poko.
“When we first bought them in 2013, we were told it was one male and one female,” Hideaki Yamamoto, the exhibition breeding manager of the zoo, told VICE World News.
“It’s difficult to determine their sex from their physical characteristics, so we didn’t know,” he said.
To confuse matters further, the toucans exhibited courtship behavior, which is usually seen between mating partners.
“Toto would give Poko food. And if Poko flew out of the nest, Toto would follow to be closer to her,” Yamamoto said. “We now know that same-sex birds can exhibit those acts too.”
Same-sex courtship behavior, which can include dances, gift-giving, or showing specific body parts, has been documented in over 130 bird species. It’s raised questions among scientists about the purpose of these acts: If it doesn’t help produce offspring, why bother with all the song and dance?
But research by scholars such as Geoff MacFarlane, a biologist at Australia’s University of Newcastle, shows that birds may engage in homosexual behavior, or even gay sex, simply because they can.
In a study of over 93 bird species, MacFarlane noticed that whichever sex had less parental responsibilities, they’d typically engage in more homosexual behavior. More time on their hands meant more freedom to be sexually explorative, which, in MacFarlane’s study, males in polygynous species indulged in.
Birds aren’t the only animals to engage in homosexual sex.
Female homosexual behavior among Japanese macaques, a genus of Old World monkeys, has been well-documented. Some scientists have even identified male macaques competing with females for female sexual partners.
At the Maruyama zoo, Yamamoto hopes to increase the number of toucans and is considering adding a male to the mix. When that day comes, the zoo will find out if Toto and Poko are as inseparable as they seem.
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LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A Las Vegas couple says their ongoing pool construction hit a little bit of a snag after workers unearthed a set of bones which turned out to be a rare find.
The bones are believed to be up to 14,000 years old and date back to Earth’s most recent ice age.
Matt Perkins and his husband recently moved from Washington state to a newly built home near Buffalo and Grand Teton drives.
They were looking forward to their new six-foot-deep pool until Las Vegas police showed up at their home on Monday.
During the excavation process, the pool builders dug up a set of bones that were approximately four to five feet below ground level.
“Monday morning we woke up and the pool guy said he was going to come to check out the pool,” explained Perkins. “We assume that was normal, we wake up he’s out front with the police.”
Police and crime scene investigators determined the bones did not belong to a human and the remains were not of any law enforcement concern.
“We had joked on Friday that while they started digging, ‘Oh great maybe they will find a dinosaur for us and it will pay for our pool,” quipped Perkins.
“Obviously, when they told us they found some fossils, that was more of a shock to us than we were expecting,” added Perkins.
Joshua Bonde, the director of research of the Nevada Science Center, visited the backyard on Tuesday to inspect the discovery.
“It’s somewhere between 6,000 and 14,000 years old,” explained Bonde.
“What we found was when they were excavating the backyard pool, they were cutting through ice age layers of sediment and sure enough they had a skeleton of an animal,” explained Perkins.
Bonde says the large bones may belong to a horse or similar large mammal.
“So this thing is about four to five feet below the present ground surface and so the animal was probably wandering around the world in Southern Nevada, which was not nearly as populated as it is today,” explained Bonde. “There were probably still people in the area and was probably a little bit marshy.”
The area was fed by natural springs and served as a watering spot for wildlife in the arid Mohave desert approximately 14,000 years ago.
“This animal appears to be surrounded by partially compacted vegetation so it probably died on the edge of a spring and probably fell into the spring to be preserved or some other mechanism buried it very quickly,” added Bonde.
The backyard bone discovery is not far from Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, which has seen rare fossils, such as mammoths, unearthed before.