Emily S. Rueb

And now, a plane crash could be added to that list, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board filed this week.

A crop-dusting plane that dumped hundreds of gallons of pink water over a field in Turkey, Texas, about 300 miles northwest of Dallas, crashed to the ground in early September, according to safety board documents. No major injuries were reported.

The pilot, Raj Horan, had been “conducting a gender reveal flight for a friend” when, after releasing about 350 gallons of water, the single-seat plane “got too slow” and stalled, records show.

A passenger, identified as Jennifer Harrell, sustained minor injuries, according to the incident report. The aircraft, which struck the ground and flipped on its back, sustained substantial damage.

Attempts to reach Harrell and Horan on Friday were not successful.

The pilot told investigators there were “no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane.”

Cultural researchers have traced the origins of the so-called gender reveal party to the late 2000s. But those early attempts feel almost quaint by today’s standards.

Despite the possibility of attracting backlash for reinforcing gender stereotypes and schadenfreude should things go wrong, some couples have felt that confetti or cake sprinkles are not flashy enough to deliver their messages.

Last month, an Iowa couple trying to create a device that could shoot colored powder into the air inadvertently built a pipe bomb that killed one of their guests. A day later, authorities in the state investigated another explosion of a store-bought “gender reveal kit,” according to The Associated Press.

On Australia’s Gold Coast, a black car was rigged to spew thick clouds of blue smoke. But after drifting slowly and spinning its wheels on the road, the car burst into flames. (The driver managed to escape.)

And in 2018, a man shot a rifle at a target containing a highly explosive chemical mixed with colorful powder packets that were intended to create a pink or blue cloud. The resulting explosion, however, sparked a massive fire that took firefighters a week to extinguish and burned more than 45,000 acres in Arizona.

The man who shot the rifle, a Customs and Border Protection agent, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of U.S. Forest Service regulations and agreed to pay $220,000 in restitution.

This article originally appeared in

'Gender Reveal' Celebration in Texas Led to a Plane Crash

In recent years, expectant parents have gone to extreme lengths to create splashy, Instagrammable moments to announce the sex of their child. Some of the celebrations, however, have ended in calamity: a 45,000-acre forest fire, a flaming car, a deadly explosion.

The inmate, Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez, who had been incarcerated at Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia, about 65 miles west of Savannah, walked free Friday around 11:30 a.m., according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The department, one of the country’s largest prison systems with nearly 52,000 inmates, announced his release in a statement three days after the incident. It did not explain how the error had occurred or why it had not been revealed sooner.

A spokeswoman for the department, Lori Benoit, said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding his release and would carry out a “full internal investigation.”

“The priority of the Georgia Department of Corrections is apprehending the offender as quickly as possible, and at this time, we have all resources focused on the search,” Benoit said.

According to online corrections records, Munoz-Mendez, 31, was sentenced to life in prison for rapes that occurred in 2010 and 2012, as well as aggravated child molestation in 2010.

John Warr, the Gwinnett County prosecutor who handled the case, said that Munoz-Mendez had begun molesting the 7-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time, culminating in rape several years later.

Warr, who helped convict Munoz-Mendez in 2015, said by phone Tuesday that he had learned about the accidental release by reading an article online.

“He’d been out of prison, mistakenly, for about 60 hours by the time we heard about it,” he said.

Warr said that he “immediately” called the victim, who lives with a foster mother, and that they were both “shocked.”

Neither had been contacted by the corrections department, he said.

“Something needs to be done about the protocols, the procedures, about verifying who they’re releasing,” Warr said of the department.

Warr said the state had recently passed a constitutional amendment bolstering the rights of crime victims to be notified about updates in legal cases involving those who have harmed them.

“I don’t think those were adhered to,” he said, “definitely not in a timely manner.”

The corrections department asked for help in capturing the inmate, adding that he should not be approached.

“The public is reminded to call 911,” the department said, or call 478-992-5111.

Convicted Rapist in Georgia Is Released From Prison 'in Error'

A manhunt is underway in Georgia for a convicted rapist and child molester who is serving a life sentence and was released “in error,” the authorities said.

Jo Rowan is the associate strategy director of the firm, PriestmanGoode, which has spent more than two decades applying design thinking to the air travel experience, including airport lounges and cabin seating.

Now, she said, the firm is turning its attention to the less “glamorous” side of things.

“Onboard waste is a big issue,” she said. “Knowing that you have 4 billion passengers per year, it all adds up very quickly.”

The redesigned items are featured in an exhibit, “Get Onboard: Reduce.Reuse.Rethink,” that opened last month at the Design Museum in London.

By far the biggest environmental issue with air travel — and the reason 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg opted to sail to New York from Europe in August, rather than fly — is the associated carbon emissions, which are growing at a faster rate than predicted in previous, already dire projections.

But as air travel becomes increasingly accessible, and as more people take to the skies, airlines have been making public pledges to curb their environmental footprints, including the plastic forks and leftovers their passengers leave behind.

How much trash are we talking about?

Because there is no central authority tracking statistics about the amount of waste produced on flights, accurate and recent figures are hard to come by. But the International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing about 300 airlines, conducted a small study at Heathrow Airport in London and estimated that airlines generated about 6.7 million tons of cabin waste last year.

As low-cost airlines proliferate, and as the tourism industry continues to court middle-class customers, that number could double in the next decade.

“It’s a relatively limited sample at this stage,” Chris Goater, a spokesman for the trade association, said.

Pere Fullana i Palmer, director of the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change, a research group based in Barcelona, Spain, has taken an even deeper dive into the issue of airline trash.

“You cannot improve a system if you don’t know it,” he said.

Fullana i Palmer’s research group teamed up with Iberia Airlines, Gate Gourmet, Ferrovial and Ecoembes to analyze approximately 8,400 pounds of garbage on 145 flights into Madrid. The group found that 33% was food waste, 28% was cardboard and paper waste, and about 12% was plastic.

How can this be fixed?

As consumers become increasingly conscious of the outsize environmental impact of air travel, airlines are under growing pressure to take action.

Alaska Airlines, Ryanair and British Airways have made public declarations to reduce waste, and Air France said it would eliminate 210 million single-use plastic items like cups and stirring sticks by the end of this year.

On one Qantas flight in May, which the company called “the first-ever commercial flight to produce no landfill waste,” the airline removed individually packaged servings of milk and Vegemite, and served meals in containers made from sugar cane, with utensils made of crop starch.

A month later, on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, United Airlines served meals using “fully recyclable or compostable serviceware.”

But replicating such innovations on a meaningful scale will be tricky. Regular flights are not equipped with the necessary facilities or systems for attendants to manage recycled goods, according to Megan Epler Wood, the author of “Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet” and the director of Harvard’s International Sustainable Tourism Initiative. (On a recent trip, Wood said, she saw a flight attendant separating recyclables with her bare hands.)

The solution, she said, would require collaboration among airlines, local authorities and airports, which are ultimately responsible for handling and hauling trash.

IATA, the airline trade association, said the rules governing international catering waste — which involve a complex set of international and country-specific regulations meant to prevent the spread of disease — should be reconsidered to increase recycling rates.

While all cabin waste is subject to the regulations of the country in which the plane lands, some European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, have imposed additional measures to protect agriculture. This means that even untouched food and drink, which, according to IATA estimates, makes up about 20% of total airline waste, ends up in landfills or is incinerated.

The regulations governing single-use plastic, which will be banned in the European Union by 2021, also present challenges, according to the trade association.

“We’ve developed a lot of guidance to airlines to deal with the issue of cabin waste,” Michael Gill, IATA’s director of aviation environment, said. “But airlines cannot solve the issue on their own.”

“Its vital regulators understand the full impacts,” he continued, “including increased energy and water use, as well as CO₂ emissions that result from heavier materials carried on board.”

Fullana i Palmer agreed that legislation permitting more materials to be recycled or turned into biogas was needed but said that change was possible.

“I am optimistic because there is a big push for saving our planet,” he said. “The tsunami is so strong that all sectors will have to adapt.”

The airline meal, reimagined

In designing the onboard items, PriestmanGoode was conscious of heft because the more weight on an aircraft, the higher the fuel emissions. The tray is made of coffee grounds and husks (also a coffee byproduct). The dishes are made of pressed wheat bran, and a single spork made of coconut palm wood, a waste product that farmers would otherwise burn, replaces plastic cutlery.

“If you picked it up, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t plastic,” Rowan said. “Part of what we were trying to do was actually look at how we could make this a desirable product, as well as being sustainable.”

The team also played with lids of dishes, which are typically made of transparent plastic, to signify what’s inside: a pressed banana leaf for salads and side dishes, an edible waffle cone for dessert.

The goal, Rowan said, is “getting people to think about the way that they travel and also getting airlines and the service providers to think about what they offer.”

Rowan said airlines and suppliers had shown interest in the products, which, for now, are available only at the museum through February.

“We’re moving this on to the next level of development,” she said, to “get some of these things to fly.”

Airline Food Waste Is a Problem. Can Banana Leaves Be Part of the Solution?

From disposable headphones and plastic cutlery to food scraps and toilet waste, the average airline passenger leaves behind over 3 pounds of garbage, according to one estimate. To get travelers and airlines thinking — and talking — about that rather large pile of trash, a British design firm has refashioned the economy meal tray, replacing plastic with renewable materials such as coffee grounds, banana leaves and coconut wood.

“Who would have thought, 50 years ago, that a small town in central Iowa would be saying this: We see you, we hear you, we welcome you,” Reginald Stewart, vice president for diversity and inclusion at Iowa State University, said of the kaleidoscopic markings.

But in early September, about a week after The Ames Tribune covered the cheerful ribbon-cutting ceremony, a letter arrived from the federal government: The motley intersection was a safety concern, it said, and a liability for the city.

The Federal Highway Administration, which sets the rules for the nation’s roadway signage and signals, made a “request” that the crosswalks be removed.

The Ames City Council voted unanimously to ignore the letter.

“Honestly, I just do not think they have any jurisdiction over the roads in the city that we’re paying for with our own tax money,” Mark Lambert, the Ames city attorney, said.

Cities Crossing the Line

Last year, the number of pedestrian deaths in the United States was the highest in almost three decades, according to a Governors Highway Safety Association study that examined causes such as alcohol use, speeding, unsafe infrastructure and the prevalence of SUVs. It also suggested that the increased use of smartphones may be a factor as well.

As more pedestrians and cyclists share roads in urban areas, local officials have made attempts to involve communities in transportation infrastructure, like crosswalks, because they say it increases the health and well-being of the area.

But in doing so, many have hit roadblocks with the federal government.

In February 2016, St. Louis let its fleur-de-lis and rainbow crosswalks fade away after the federal government asked that they be removed. Washington’s bright dragons and zodiac designs climbing the ladder lines in Chinatown were subject to federal scrutiny. And a rainbow-themed crosswalk in Lexington, Kentucky, was said to create “potential confusion for motorists, pedestrians and other jurisdictions who may see these markings,” according to local news reports.

The government also said Ames’ installation could cause others “to install similar crosswalk treatments in their cities,” according to letters sent by the Federal Highway Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In its letter to Ames, which was shared with The New York Times, the highway administration said that crosswalk art “diminishes the contrast between the white lines and the pavement, potentially decreasing the effectiveness of the crosswalk markings and the safety of pedestrian traffic.”

“The purpose of aesthetic treatments and crosswalk art is to ‘draw the eye’ of pedestrians and drivers,” it continued, “in direct conflict with commanding the attention of drivers and motorists to minimize the risk of collision.”

But urban planning practitioners and advocates say the government’s claims that crosswalk art makes intersections less safe are not rooted in evidence.

Michael Lydon, a founder of the urban design firm Street Plans, has been working with cities and community groups to develop street art projects for almost a decade.

“The thing that gets under my skin, personally,” he said, “is that this response from FHWA is not really grounded in any data.”

“There are hundreds around the country, if not thousands around the world, and I don’t know of any study that has been able to show that they are actually causing any problems,” Lydon said.

“In some instances,” he continued, “communities can find that they’re actually improving safety.”

What Do the Rules Say?

The rules of the road are contained in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways, a weighty tome that dictates everything from the red color, octagonal shape and white lettering of stop signs to the configuration of orange cones and barrels in a construction zone.

The intent is to create a uniform and consistent language, like a dictionary for users of public roads.

In the latest edition, which was published in 2009, Section 3B.18 offers guidance about constructing crosswalks. The manual recommends, among other things, using white stripes — usually painted longitudinally in single stripes or in pairs — because the contrast on asphalt, especially when mixed with retro-reflective beads that illuminate in headlights, are most visible to motorists.

“These standard crosswalk designs have been tested and researched to verify that road users understand them and their meaning,” a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said. “Crosswalks should provide for optimal contrast and be readily visible.”

In 2013, the highway administration issued a memorandum affirming an earlier ruling that “crosswalk art is actually contrary to the goal of increased safety and most likely could be a contributing factor to a false sense of security for both motorists and pedestrians.”

When asked for evidence that colorful pavement markings within a crosswalk have an impact on safety, the agency was unable to provide research specifically studying the effect of rainbow markings.

On Friday, a senior Federal Highway Administration official said the agency valued “the long history of partnerships that have led to new innovations.”

“We are always open to collaborating with state and local jurisdictions that have ideas with potential to improve roadway performance and safety,” the official added.

Where the Rub Meets the Road

“It’s particularly a sensitive issue right now because pedestrian and bicycle fatalities have been going up,” said Jeffrey F. Paniati, executive director of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, who spent more than three decades at the Federal Highway Administration.

As municipalities work to accommodate more pedestrians and cyclists, he said, city officials are forced to make tough decisions to respond to the needs of communities while complying with federal guidelines, which can potentially create additional liability or risk if they are ignored.

“The rub,” Paniati said, is “where do you draw the line?”

“Where does the need for this uniformity and consistency stop, and the allowance for local decision making and creativity start?” he asked. “It’s a bit of a slippery slope.”

How Cities Are Responding

Now cities are gathering data to show the benefits of more creative crosswalks.

The Seattle Department of Transportation has installed 40 artistic crosswalks, which include rainbow stripes and geometric designs created by local artists, and has started a formal program for communities to request one.

Dongho Chang, the city’s traffic engineer, said his department had been monitoring areas where nontraditional crosswalks were installed. “There were no reported collisions involving pedestrians at the colorful crosswalks during the first year,” he said, though there were pedestrian collisions at nearby traditional crosswalks.

“A lot of the concern is based on subjective nature,” he said of the artfully painted crosswalks. “There isn’t any definitive research or cases.”

In addition to the fewer “collisions and conflicts,” he said, people had responded positively to the vibrant colors and designs.

Chang, who is on the committee that updates the federal manual on roadway signage and markings, said he hoped that Seattle’s research would “spur a dialogue” with the highway administration to think about contexts where such installations were appropriate and could make conditions better.

Meanwhile, in Ames

On Friday, Lambert, the Ames city attorney, said the city had not heard from the Federal Highway Administration.

The Ames Tribune published an editorial last Saturday that said the government was “sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong” and was making “ridiculous claims” that the colors were a distraction and posed a risk.

“We also encourage Ames to continue to do everything it can to support, encourage and celebrate diversity in our community,” it said, “including painting more crosswalks.”

The Government Says Rainbow Crosswalks Could Be Unsafe. Are They Really?

Ahead of an annual LGBTQ festival in Ames, Iowa, members of the City Council decided to liven up a pedestrian crosswalk near the downtown shopping district by painting stripes in colors evoking the gay, nonbinary and transgender pride flags.

And according to a study published this week, about 1 in 10 older adults are considered binge drinkers.

“Binge drinking, even episodically or infrequently, may negatively affect other health conditions by exacerbating disease, interacting with prescribed medications and complicating disease management,” said Dr. Benjamin Han, the lead author of the study that was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Alcohol is also a risk factor for injury, Han said, but the consequences and recovery from a fall are much more serious for an 81-year-old than a 21-year-old.

The study defined binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in a sitting for men, and four or more drinks in a sitting for women. And a drink equaled a can or bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, a shot of liquor, or a mixed drink with liquor in it.

Han’s group analyzed data from the annual U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2015-17. In all, the findings included 10,927 adults aged 65 or older who reported their drinking habits in the previous 30 days.

The group did not include adults living in long-term-care facilities or nursing homes, Han added.

The prevalence of binge drinking among older adults is still relatively low compared with other age groups, Han said. More than 38 percent of college-aged adults, 18 to 25, had recently drunk excessively, the highest prevalence of any age group. Adults ages 26 to 34 had only slightly fewer binge drinkers, and the second-highest percentage, the study found.

While the drinking habits of teenagers and younger people has been a focus for clinicians and researchers, more attention should be paid to older adults, Han said.

Timothy S. Naimi, an alcohol epidemiologist and professor at Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health, said the 1 in 10 figure “is an impressive number and it’s concerning.”

The number is “undoubtedly an underestimate,” he added, because people tend to miscalculate how much they actually drink and heavy drinkers are less likely to be available or to be included in surveys for other reasons.

Han said he hoped the study would emphasize the importance for clinicians to screen older patients for alcohol use and to educate them about how their bodies become more sensitive to alcohol as they age.

The study did not examine the causes of excessive drinking or whether this number represents an increase or a decrease from previous years. However, Joseph J. Palamar, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and an author of the study, pointed to the cohort itself as a factor.

“I believe that this is driven in part by the baby boomers aging,” Palamar said, about a group that was more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol than the generation before it.

Dr. George F. Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the organizations that funded the study, said the findings confirmed trends they have been monitoring.

In 2017, epidemiologists at the institute published a study using data from 2001-02 and 2012-13 that showed that problem drinking was rising among older Americans.

And more women of all ages, who are more susceptible to alcohol-related problems than men, are drinking heavily, Koob added.

“In the old days, many, many more men drank than women,” he said. “And now the gap is closing.”

This week’s study crystallized a very real problem, Koob said, especially the pharmacological aspect.

“You can actually kill yourself much more easily with alcohol combined with one of these pills,” he said.

“This is the elephant in the room piece about alcohol that society doesn’t understand,” he said, that alcohol “is a drug and when it’s taken in excess, it can have some pretty harmful effects.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/health/binge-drinkers-adult-alcohol.html" id="add76e87-1ec2-34c3-a130-1fe6d2bc1f7a">The New York Times</a>.

One in 10 Older Adults Binge Drinks, Study Says

Excessive alcohol consumption is not safe for a person at any age, but it is particularly dangerous for older adults.

Duran, 23, accepted the offer. Just four days into the two-week trip, he was helping uncover parts of a skull belonging to a triceratops, most likely about 65 million years old.

In an interview Friday, Duran sounded a note of regret that he did not land the internship, at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles. Still, he said, he was happy with how things ultimately worked out.

“I think I found a more significant treasure in the Badlands,” he said.

On June 4, the pair spied what they first thought was petrified wood but later turned out to be a bone fragment — specifically, a roughly 3-foot horn that would have been attached to the dinosaur’s left brow. The discovery was made in the Hell Creek Formation, a series of rock formations that cover parts of Montana and the Dakotas dating to the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago.

According to Michael Kjelland, the professor who invited Duran on the dig, the area has produced bones from three separate triceratops — an unusually high concentration.

Kjelland, who teaches biology at Mayville State University in North Dakota, said it was too early to glean the significance of the bones, which might not be part of a complete skeleton. He has seen several triceratops skulls in the course of his studies, he said, including one belonging to an almost fully intact fossil called Gundy that was discovered in the region in 1992.

Duran said he had a childhood passion for dinosaurs that simply never dwindled.

“I’ve always found it fascinating that there are lost worlds to be discovered,” he said, adding that learning about the period before humans arrived was “very important for understanding life on Earth.”

Duran met Kjelland a few years ago at a biotechnology conference, and the two have since teamed up on several projects, including starting a nonprofit called Fossil Excavators.

One of the organization’s objectives, Kjelland said, is to provide opportunities for students like Duran.

“It’s not just digging fossils,” he said. “It’s being out in nature” and learning what the past can teach us about how to prevent extinction and the worst effects of global warming.

Before the dig, Kjelland warned Duran that they might have to eat rattlesnakes and live off the land to survive in the Badlands, a region known for its extreme temperatures, scorpions and swarming insects.

“You have to have patience, too, because these are multipiece, 3D jigsaw puzzles, and it’s quite a process to get them excavated and out,” he said.

It took about 10 days to extract the fragile skull and “engineering that rivaled SpaceX,” he joked. They used pickaxes to dig out the ground around it and elongated screwdrivers to pry the dirt and the mud apart from the bones.

To stabilize the bones for transportation, they used a glue specifically formulated to seep into the crevices and an accelerating agent to harden it. Once the skull, which, excluding its fan-shape frill, is about 5 feet long, was out of the ground, they wrapped it in strips of foil and burlap dipped it in plaster to make a cast. They built a makeshift crate out of two-by-fours and taped memory foam to a protruding cheekbone to reduce vibrations in transit. They used an excavator to hoist the skull, which they estimated weighed 750 to 1,000 pounds, onto a local cattle rancher’s truck.

Duran and the fossil excavators made a video of the expedition.

They named the skull Alice, after the landowner who had allowed them to dig on her property.

Alice’s skull is currently resting in a plaster jacket in Kjelland’s lab on the outskirts of Valley City, North Dakota.

“I’m not totally sure yet where she’s going,” Kjelland said Friday. “I want it to be somewhere where a lot of folks can visit her and see her and maybe do some research on her.”

For his part, Duran said he hoped to take some of the molds back to the Merced campus.

This summer, he is taking a course in organic chemistry in order to graduate in the fall. He is not sure yet what career he wants to pursue, but it will most likely be in biotechnology or paleontology, he said.

And he plans to keep digging in North Dakota.

“There are plenty of secrets that remain in the Badlands,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" id="c48146d8-6618-34e2-aff5-de9df9adf096">The New York Times</a>.

Triceratops Skull, 65 Million Years Old, Unearthed by College Student, 23

Harrison Duran, a biology student at the University of California, Merced, had just been rejected from a summer internship when he received an invitation from a professor to go fossil hunting in a remote area of North Dakota.

“They’re going to die if they don’t get help,” said a woman’s voice on the video.

The woman, Dixie V. McCoy, who had her 2-year-old granddaughter in one arm and her phone in her other hand, recorded the scene on Facebook Live, capturing dozens of beachgoers and lifeguards surrounding the flailing pod of whales, shoveling water onto the animals with cupped hands. Some waded chest-deep into the water, McCoy said, despite shouts of shark sightings from the shore, to heave the creatures back out to sea.

“They were just so willing to help those poor whales,” she said. “It was a spectacular moment.”

In all, nearly 50 whales swam into shallow waters and as many as six caught in the surf were pushed back successfully, according to a spokesman at the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division, part of the state’s Department of Natural Resources and one of the first organizations that arrived on the scene to help with the rescue.

Three of the whales died, including one that had to be euthanized, he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, harbor pilots located the pod of more than 40 whales in the Brunswick shipping channel. A group from the National Marine Mammal Foundation monitored the whales by boat.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that the group dodged a bullet, and that they’re now on their way to deeper water,” said Clay George, a biologist for the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division.

Crews had also flown a helicopter above the area, which is about 90 miles south of Savannah, and determined no other whales were stranded.

Pilot whales are essentially large dolphins, and can grow to 24 feet in length and weigh 6,600 pounds.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, George said they were still investigating why the animals rushed to shore, an event he called “exceedingly rare in Georgia.”

George described the whales as “1- to 3-ton dolphins.”

“They’re so social that if one animal in the group gets injured or sick, all the other animals in the group can follow them great distances into shore,” he said, “and then they can strand.”

Normally these creatures swim 100 miles offshore, he said, which means “something went wrong,” possibly days or weeks ago.

In the necropsy, George said researchers will be looking for ingested plastic, evidence of plastic netting or signs of an acoustic disturbance, like bombs or sonars, that could have caused one or more of the animals to swim toward land.

“Tomorrow will be the beginning of a process that could go on for potentially weeks,” he said.

Normally, added George, he would not advise humans to intervene with pilot whales, but in this case, “it was the right thing to do.”

Dr. Erin Fougeres, who administers the marine mammal stranding program for the Fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Southeast, said that “mass strandings of pilot whales aren’t entirely uncommon for us.”

There have been about 23 mass strandings in southeastern states since 1991, mostly along the Gulf of Mexico, but never in Georgia, she said.

The most important thing to do if you see a stranded mammal, Fougeres said, is to contact experts with NOAA by calling 1-877-WHALE-HELP in the Southeast, or through the agency’s “Dolphin and Whale 911” app.

“This event, so far, and fingers crossed, has had the best possible outcome,” she said. “We don’t often have happy endings.”

Georgia beachgoers save stranded pilot whales in dramatic rescue

The camera panned to the water’s edge on St. Simons Island’s East Beach in Georgia, where a row of short-finned pilot whales writhed, clicked and whistled as their shiny black bodies caught breaking waves in the late afternoon light on Tuesday.

<h1>Last week, Michael L. Johnson, a former college wrestler convicted of failing to disclose to sexual partners that he was HIV positive in a racially charged case that reignited calls to reexamine laws that criminalize HIV exposure, walked out of the Boonville Correctional Center in Missouri 25 years earlier than expected.</h1>

Johnson, 27, was released on parole Tuesday after an appeals court found that his 2015 trial was “fundamentally unfair.” His original sentence was longer than the state average for second-degree murder.

Reached by phone two days after his release, Johnson said he was rediscovering freedom through convenience store snacks, cartoons and his cellphone.

“I’m feeling really, really good,” he said.

But there were periods when he felt intimidated by people who did not believe he had a right to stand up for himself, he added.

His case, which encompasses a half-dozen years of court appearances, unflattering headlines and stints in solitary confinement, has galvanized advocates working to update laws that they say further stigmatize and unfairly penalize people with HIV.

Johnson, who was a black, gay athlete at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, has become a public face of people who are disproportionately affected by the virus and entangled in the criminal justice system. (If current trends continue, about half of all black men who have sex with men in the United States will eventually learn they have HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

Johnson’s legal troubles began in 2013, when he was arrested after a white man he had had consensual sex with told the police he believed that Johnson had given him the virus.

Five other men, three of them white, would later testify that Johnson had not only failed to disclose his HIV status before engaging in consensual sex, but had willfully lied about it.

Johnson has publicly maintained that he informed all six men he was HIV positive before having sex without a condom.

After a weeklong trial in 2015 in St. Charles County, a conservative, predominantly white area northwest of St. Louis, Johnson was convicted on multiple felony counts, including recklessly infecting another with HIV, which carries a 10-year minimum sentence.

The jury sought the maximum penalty of 60 1/2 years even though prosecutors offered no genetic evidence that Johnson had infected any of his partners, according to BuzzFeed News.

The judge ultimately sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Today, some of the people who put him in prison say the sentencing and parts of the prosecution were mishandled.

“We’re still operating under laws that were based on views that are outdated and are proven inaccurate by science,” said Tim Lohmar, the St. Charles County prosecuting attorney, whose office’s handling of the trial has been criticized.

Missouri is one of about 34 states with laws that make it a crime to expose another person to the virus without disclosure or add additional penalties for people with HIV who are convicted of separate offenses, such as sex work, according to the nonprofit Center for HIV Law and Policy. In six states, a person may be required to register as a sex offender if convicted of an HIV-related crime.

Emily S. Rueb

Articles written by the author

'Gender Reveal' Celebration in Texas Led to a Plane Crash

Convicted Rapist in Georgia Is Released From Prison 'in Error'

Airline Food Waste Is a Problem. Can Banana Leaves Be Part of the Solution?

The Government Says Rainbow Crosswalks Could Be Unsafe. Are They Really?

One in 10 Older Adults Binge Drinks, Study Says

Triceratops Skull, 65 Million Years Old, Unearthed by College Student, 23

Georgia beachgoers save stranded pilot whales in dramatic rescue

He emerged from prison a potent symbol of HIV criminalization

Arsenic in bottled water prompts a product removal: How much is safe?

Rep. Duncan Hunter's wife pleads guilty in corruption case

First woman to lead a U.S. Army infantry division forged a 'narrow path' to leadership

Congratulations, Morehouse class of '19: your loans will be paid off

When important people die, he's there

Washington state moves toward free and reduced college tuition, with businesses footing the bill

A teacher shared her salary, and a stranger started a school supplies wish list

A Teacher Shared Her Salary, and a Stranger Started a School Supplies Wish List

A Teacher Shared Her Salary, and a Stranger Started a School Supplies Wish List

Netflix Project to Spotlight Thai Cave Rescue

Tennessee officials identify 7 victims in 'Gruesome' series of killings

Former Florida police officer is sentenced to 25 years in fatal shooting of black man