CLOVER, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been charged with murder after killing her husband by putting eye drops into his water for several days.

 York County deputies said 52-year-old Lana Clayton confessed to investigators after an autopsy uncovered a high amount of tetrahydrozoline in her husband's body.

 The chemical is found in over-the-counter eye drops such as Visine.

 Authorities say 64-year-old Stephen Clayton was found dead July 21 in the couple's home in Clover.

 Arrest warrants and the statement from deputies didn't give a motive for the alleged poisoning.

 Lana Clayton also is charged with malicious tampering with a drug product or food.

 Jail records did not indicate if she had a lawyer. ||||| A York County wife was charged with murder Friday weeks after her husband died because investigators found that she poisoned her husband, police said.

 Lana Sue Clayton, 52, was arrested Friday for the killing of Steven Clayton, said Kevin Tolson, York County Sheriff.

 Lana Clayton confessed to surreptitiously poisoning her husband’s water with a chemical called tetrahydrozoline over a three-day period from July 19 to July 21 until he died, arrest warrants in the case show.

 Lana Clayton worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Charlotte, according to her Facebook page.

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 Steven Clayton, 64, died July 21 at his upscale waterfront Island Forks Road home on the South Carolina shore of Lake Wylie. But a toxicology report from Steven Clayton’s autopsy found that he had been poisoned with the chemical that is usually used in over the counter eye drops and nasal sprays.

 Poisoning can happen when the chemical is swallowed or ingested, according to The United States Library of medicine website.

 Lana Clayton also is charged with malicious tampering of food, according to police.

 Steven Clayton was found in the foyer of his home after what appeared to be a fall down the stairs.

 Police have not released a motive for the crime. Lana Clayton has no prior criminal record in York County or anywhere in South Carolina, according to South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division records.

 Legal action concerning Steven Clayton’s estate after his death has already been opened with his wife appointed personal representative for Steve Clayton’s estate, according to officials with the York County Probate Court. It remains unclear what effect the arrest of Lana Clayton for murder will have on the probate action or how Steven Clayton’s estate will now be disbursed.

 The couple lived in a house owned by Steven Clayton and valued at $822,000, according to county records. The lot next door to the home, also owned by Steven Clayton, is valued at $385,000, records show.

 The home is a copy of the famous George Washington Mount Vernon estate that Steve Clayton lovingly restored, said Ken Sanford, a Lake Wylie friend.

 Sanford, who knew both Steven and Lana Clayton, said he was “in shock” over the news that Lana Clayton confessed to killing her husband.

 “I am just stunned,” Sanford said.

 Lana Clayton “seemed like a sweet lady,” Sanford said. “Steven was very proud of her accomplishments.”

 Lana Clayton worked in nursing for the VA in Charlotte, Sanford said.

 Steven Clayton, a Florida native, retired after founding, owning and operating a company called Physical Therapy Resources. The company had branches around the United States, according to Steven Clayton’s obituary.

 Clayton was known for his generosity with children and other causes. Clayton, a former wrestling coach, mentored children in sports and other ways over the years.

 Steven Clayton also was a member of the Lake Wylie Pilot editorial board, before the weekly community paper closed at the end of 2016.

 Lana Clayton’s arrest stunned Frank Keefe, owner of the Bagel Boat in Lake Wylie where Steven Clayton regularly ate a hot pastrami sandwich and was loved by all.

 “I am absolutely in a state of shock,” Keefe said Friday afternoon.

 At Steven Clayton’s funeral in July, dozens of people spoke about his generosity, Keefe said.

 “This is just stunning,” Keefe said of Steven Clayton’s wife being charged in his death.

 The arrest of Lana Clayton for murder is the second spousal arrest in a homicide involving a York County couple in less than a month. On Aug. 14, former cop James Baldwin of York was charged with the murder of his wife, Judy.

 Baldwin, a former York Police Department officer, is accused of beating his wife to death in Chester County in 2016, then covering up the crime. Baldwin claimed his wife died in a car crash on the way to a hospital after a fall from a ladder while hanging Christmas ornaments, but was charged after police investigated Judy Baldwin’s death for more than a year.

 Lana Clayton has not yet appeared before a magistrate. Because she is charged with murder, Lana Clayton can not be issued a bond and will remain in jail.

 It is unclear if she has hired a lawyer.

 Check back for updates on this developing story. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been charged with murder after killing her husband by putting eye drops into his water for several days, the AP reports. York County deputies said 52-year-old Lana Clayton confessed to investigators after an autopsy uncovered a high amount of tetrahydrozoline in her husband's body. The chemical is found in over-the-counter eye drops such as Visine. Authorities say 64-year-old Stephen Clayton was found dead July 21 in the couple's home in Clover after apparently falling down the stairs, the Herald reports. Arrest warrants and the statement from deputies didn't give a motive for the alleged poisoning. Lana Clayton also is charged with malicious tampering with a drug product or food.


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You are only as old as you feel, as the saying goes, and new research suggests that feeling younger than you are could have health benefits. A study has found that people who felt younger than their actual age had a lower death rate than people who felt their age or older.

 How old we feel often reflects our physical and mental well-being. Many people have a self-perceived age that is different to their actual chronological age. How old we feel often reflects our physical and mental well-being. Many people have a self-perceived age that is different to their actual chronological age.

 The research letter, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, observed a lower death rate in older people who felt 3 or more years younger than their actual age, compared with participants who felt their actual age or more than 1 year older.

 "Self-perceived age reflects appraisals of health, physical limitations, and well-being in later life," write the authors of the study, from University College London in the UK. "Older people typically feel younger than their chronological age, and it is thought that those who feel younger than their actual age have reduced mortality."

 A number of social experiences have been identified that affect self-perceived age over time. Role transitions and off-time events such as becoming a parent at an early age, experiencing stress, the development of serious health problems such as heart problems or cancer - all have been found to speed up self-perceived aging.

 Authors Isla Rippon and Dr. Andrew Steptoe analyzed data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing in 2004-2005 for 6,489 participants. They measured the self-perceived age of the participants by asking the question, "How old do you feel you are?"

 The average chronological age for the participants was 65.8 years, and the average self-perceived age was 56.8 years.

 Participants were divided into three groups: those whose self-perceived age was close to their actual age (25.6% of participants), those who felt more than 1 year older than their actual age (4.8% of participants), and those who felt 3 or more years younger (69.6% of participants).

 The researchers then recorded all mortality including deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease up until March 2013. The average follow-up period for the participants was 8.25 years.

 They found that the mortality rate was 14.3% among adults who felt younger than their actual age. In comparison, participants with a self-perceived age close to their actual age had a mortality rate of 18.%, and participants who felt older than their actual age had a mortality rate of 24.6%.

 'Self-perceived age has the potential to change'

 There was a strong association between self-perceived age and death caused by cardiovascular disease, although not between self-perceived age and cancer death.

 "Although baseline health, physical disability, and health behavior accounted for some of the association, after adjusting for all covariates, there remained a 41% greater mortality hazard in people who felt older than their actual age compared with those who felt younger than their actual age," write the authors.

 The authors also tested for reverse causality by excluding participant deaths within 12 months of the study's commencement. They state that this suggested the association was not a result of participants perceiving their age as older than their actual age due to being in the terminal phases of their lives.

 The proportion of study participants who felt older than their actual age was relatively small in comparison with the other self-perceived age groups, and so further research may be needed to validate these findings.

 The authors state that the mechanisms underlying these associations merit further investigation as well. They suggest that greater resilience, sense of empowerment and will to live, as well as specific health behaviors such as adhering to medical advice, could explain the lower mortality rates in people feeling younger than their actual age.

 "Self-perceived age has the potential to change, so interventions may be possible," conclude the authors. "Individuals who feel older than their actual age could be targeted with health messages promoting positive health behaviors and attitudes toward aging."

 Recently, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that running for exercise could slow the aging process. Senior citizens who run several times a week expend the same amount of energy as a typical 20-year-old when walking. ||||| Also Meets CME requirements for:

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– If you eat well and exercise, you'll probably feel younger than your chronological age. But new research suggests that simply feeling younger than your age—even when accounting for other longevity factors, such as alcohol intake, wealth, illness, education, and smoking—improves longevity, reports Medical News Today. Studying 6,489 participants in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, researchers report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that mortality was only 14.3% among those who felt younger than their age, but was 18% for those who felt their age, and 24.6% for those who felt older. "Someone who feels younger is possibly healthier than someone who feels older—they have fewer diseases, they may be more mobile," a researcher tells CBS Philadelphia. The study couldn't connect self-perceived age with death by cancer, but did establish a strong link between self-perceived age and fatal cardiovascular disease. Factors that speed up self-perceived aging include becoming a parent at an early age, experiencing stress, and developing serious health problems such as cancer. Still, more than 66% of participants say they felt at least three years younger than their chronological age. According to the study, older people who feel old may well slow the aging process by adopting a fresh outlook: "Interventions may be possible," the authors say. "Individuals who feel older than their actual age could be targeted with health messages promoting positive health behaviors and attitudes toward aging." (Other research suggests soda can age our cells as much as cigarettes.)


Enlarge The patent rendering of the foot scanning robot that would take a depth and camera image… more

 No this isn't a joke: A patent from The Walt Disney Co. wants to scan your feet for data.

 The patent, dubbed "system and method using foot recognition to create a customized guest experience," seeks to use a mobile scanning mechanism or robot that would use a foot scanner to take depth information and a camera to take appearance information of a guest's foot and use that data to determine various factors like the most popular rides and common paths guests take from ride to ride. The patent, issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on July 19 after originally being filed in April 2015, also describes the use of concealed sensors throughout a theme park that would track the guests' movements and keep collecting data on that logistical information.

 Enlarge The patent rendering of the foot scanning robot that would take a depth and camera image… more

 Gathering guest movements can help a theme park see where guests are spending most of their time, what walkways are being used the most and which rides are being visited most often so it can tweak operations and staff to those areas to improve efficiency. This is very much in line with what Disney's MagicBands were designed to do by helping gather data on guests that could be used to see what stores are getting increased traffic and how the park could adjust to improve the experience in those areas.

 "Recognizing individual guests or providing a method for an individual to register at certain rides or other attractions allows the amusement park to tailor certain experiences for the guest, such as creating a customized media output (e.g., photograph) directed to the particular guest," said the patent.

 Disney's patent states this method would be less invasive than other biometric scanning methods like retinal or fingerprint methods or taking photographs for facial recognition. It states the foot scanners would be able to take detailed information on a shoe including the color, tread and wear patterns, stains and even if gum were on the bottom of the shoe — all to reduce confusion of following the wrong guest on the data collecting side.

 Scanning a guest's feet or shoes seems to be a reliable way to track guest movements and reduce any problems that can happen if say a guest's outfit, such as their shirt or jacket, were used to identify them. "Less invasive manners, such as comparing a user's clothing or the like, can produce inaccurate results as many guests may have similar clothing or may change clothing, such putting on or taking off an outer layer or sweater, which can make detection unreliable," said the patent. It's important to note that this is just a patent and Disney files many patent that may or may not become a real part of the theme park experience. However, the theme park giant always is seeking ways to gather more information on its guests to refine its operations. Disney improving its guest experience could result in new and repeat visitation that drives Central Florida's $66 billion tourism and travel industry and attracts 60 million people annually to the region. Covers tourism, hospitality and sports business ||||| Cloud

 Disney has been granted a patent for a proposed shoe recognition system, which would inconspicuously track guests’ feet around the theme parks and gather information on the popularity of rides, stores and shows.

 A patent, filed in April last year and granted last week, describes a network of cameras and sensors which ‘blend’ in with the surroundings to scan visitors’ footwear on arrival, and track them as they move around the park.

 A robot at the entrance area will include a foot sensor for capturing a detailed image of at least one foot of a guest, and a camera for capturing a colour image of at least one foot. Disney notes in the patent that these devices are ‘angled towards the ground’ and placed at a ‘low level’ (e.g., below a guest’s knees), and are therefore ‘easier to conceal’ from the guest. It continues that the system of sensors around the park would be ‘out of a person’s line of sight’, to ‘unobtrusively capture’ information.

 Disney hopes that the data collected from the system will help improve park management and future planning. The patent states: ‘Acquiring and reacquiring guests at different locations in the amusement park can provide data to the amusement park owners, such as the most popular rides, and common guest paths from ride to ride.

 ‘Additionally, recognizing individual guests or providing a method for an individual to register at certain rides or other attractions allows the amusement park to tailor certain experiences for the guest.’

 Disney explains that tracking shoes is more effective than current scanning methods. It suggests that shoe styles vary widely in appearance and colour, which helps to reduce confusion in identifying a particular guest. When two people have the same or similar shoes, Disney says that the system can also use additional information, such as lower leg data, tread wear, and foot size to distinguish between guests.

 The mass media giant adds that it has rejected other tracking technologies such as biometric scanning. It argues that techniques like retinal and fingerprint identification tend to be invasive, obtrusive, and inaccurate if guests are wearing certain accessories such as sunglasses or hats.

 Concerned with guest awareness of tracking, Disney also neglected plans for overall clothing recognition as, ‘those systems require cameras that are visible to the person’. It said that clothing recognition can also produce unreliable results as many guests have similar attire, and will change their clothing throughout the day, such as putting on or taking off a jacket or jumper. ||||| The Query ( ) was unparseable (Invalid input value ).

 See the number search help page for more details. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Disney has received a patent to take pictures of visitors' feet at its theme parks, the Los Angeles Times reports. Specifically, the patent titled System and method using foot recognition to create a customized guest experience would scan guests shoes when they enter the park then track them as the move about. According to the Orlando Business Journal, this would allow Disney to track guests' favorite rides and paths through the park. It could also allow them to have Donald Duck greet guests by name or get souvenir photos or videos to them more quickly. The scanners could discern everything from shoe color, to wear patterns, to gum stuck on the sole. Disney filed for the patent back in 2015; it was issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office on July 19. The company, however, says it has no plans to actually use its foot camera patent. A spokesperson tells the Times that Disney files a lot of patents in an "ongoing effort to relentlessly innovate and push the boundaries of creativity and technology to create immersive experiences and legendary guest service." Disney had already decided against biometric scanning—such as fingerprinting, retinal scans, and facial recognition—to track visitors because it considers it too invasive, the Stack reports. Plus those methods can be thrown off by things like hats and sunglasses. The company also didn't want to track clothing because that would "require cameras that are visible to the person." The shoe-scanning cameras throughout the park would be "out of a person's line of sight." (But will members of "Club 33" have their photos taken?)


Article:
Stocks & Markets

 President Barack Obama's tough talk against Wall Street rattled stocks on Jan. 21. And, market observers warn, this could be just the beginning of a tough political year for investors.

 It was Obama's tone as much as his proposal—to limit growth and risk-taking by big financial institutions—that raised eyebrows. The plan would prohibit banks from running proprietary trading operations or investing in hedge funds and private equity funds.

 News of Obama's plan arrived before the stock market opened Jan. 21, but the broader indexes and affected bank stocks headed solidly lower when Obama actually stepped to the podium before 12:00 p.m. ET. Speaking of the "army of lobbyists" fighting tighter financial regulations, Obama said, "If these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have."

 The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index ended the day down 1.9% to 1116.48, its second consecutive day of steep losses. Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS), which reported a record quarterly profit on Jan.21 fell 4.1% to 160.87, while JPMorgan Chase (JPM) dropped 6.6% to 40.54 and Bank of America (BAC) lost 6.2% to 15.47.

 "We knew the regulatory environment would provide a headwind for the market as we got closer to the 2010 election," says Quincy Krosby, Prudential Financial (PRU) market strategist. But the Jan. 19 victory by Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate contest seems to have ramped up the political risk for shareholders, she says. By eroding Democrats' chances of easily approving health-care reform, the election seems to have prompted Obama to take aim at politically unpopular Wall Street instead.

 The Upheaval of Uncertainty

 When asked, many market experts say they do favor some form of financial regulation. The problem for investors and traders is not so much the proposals themselves, but the uncertainty they create while under discussion.

 "The market hates uncertainty, [and] any horse-trading involved in passing legislation introduces uncertainty," says independent market strategist Doug Peta. A prime example is health-care insurers, who have seen their stocks hurt by Washington's ongoing discussion of health-care reform. Market participants, who tend to be politically conservative, also fear the impact of government regulations on profits and economic growth. "In general, the market would prefer the government stay out of it," Peta says.

 The last 10 months have been good to financial stocks, as many banks, helped by low interest rates and rising markets, have returned to profitability. For traders, Krosby says, "the immediate reaction [on Jan. 21] was: Take profits now, ask questions later."

 Eventually, the market may appreciate Obama's tougher approach, says Jeffrey Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac , who believes the proposed changes could over the long term "shore up the integrity of the system."

 But, on Jan. 21, the market appeared to show a more emotional, knee-jerk reaction to Obama's plan, he says. "It's like a child who is being told not to do something," Hirsch says. " 'Don't take my toy away'—that's a natural reaction."

 Frank: Regulation Implemented Slowly

 Obama's six-minute address left traders and investors searching for information on how the proposal would affect financial stocks, says Dave Rovelli, managing director of equity trading at Canaccord Adams. "Who is going to come in and buy a financial stock…if they don't know what the rules are going to be?" he says.

 At least some uncertainty was lifted when House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told media any regulation would be implemented slowly, perhaps over five years. Otherwise, he told Bloomberg TV, "you create fire-sale conditions," in which banks are forced to sell off assets quickly. "We are aware that you don't want to be doing it all at once."

 Frank even said he expected Goldman could skirt the new rules by simply ending its status as a bank holding company. After his comments, financial stocks rebounded a bit.

 Obama's proposal wasn't the only reason markets fell on Jan. 21. In Asia, many investors were worried about a potential overheating of China's economy, and efforts by its government to slow down growth. After significant gains in the last two months, some technical analysts were telling traders the market was due for a pause.

 It can be a mistake to attribute too much stock market impact to political events. "It may have some short-term effect here and there," says Richard Sparks of Schaeffer's Investment Research. The effects are often limited to particular sectors, like health care or financials. And, Sparks says, "over the longer term, earnings are going to be the engine that drives the market."

 Other big factors influencing stocks include economic data, the U.S. jobless rate and the direction of interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.

 Wall Street vs. Washington

 Still, the stock market seems to have entered a period when discussions in Washington have taken on added significance. "There is a lot of political risk because the [country's] problems are so big," says John Merrill, chief investment officer at Tanglewood Wealth Management. The government has spent decades avoiding fiscal problems, for example. "This is a can that's been kicked down the road for years," he says.

 The market's Jan. 21 sell-off may be a one-day blip, the reaction to a proposal that—if financial industry lobbyists have their way—may never become law. But it is also a reminder that the factors affecting the stock market are changing. With a fresh wave of regulation looming—and investment bankers the political bad guys of the moment—Wall Streeters will no longer find Washington such a hospitable place. ||||| Web wide crawl with initial seedlist and crawler configuration from March 2011. This uses the new HQ software for distributed crawling by Kenji Nagahashi.

 What?s in the data set:

 Crawl start date: 09 March, 2011

 Crawl end date: 23 December, 2011

 Number of captures: 2,713,676,341

 Number of unique URLs: 2,273,840,159

 Number of hosts: 29,032,069

 The seed list for this crawl was a list of Alexa?s top 1 million web sites, retrieved close to the crawl start date. We used Heritrix (3.1.1-SNAPSHOT) crawler software and respected robots.txt directives. The scope of the crawl was not limited except for a few manually excluded sites.

 However this was a somewhat experimental crawl for us, as we were using newly minted software to feed URLs to the crawlers, and we know there were some operational issues with it. For example, in many cases we may not have crawled all of the embedded and linked objects in a page since the URLs for these resources were added into queues that quickly grew bigger than the intended size of the crawl (and therefore we never got to them). We also included repeated crawls of some Argentinian government sites, so looking at results by country will be somewhat skewed.

 We have made many changes to how we do these wide crawls since this particular example, but we wanted to make the data available ?warts and all? for people to experiment with. We have also done some further analysis of the content.

 If you would like access to this set of crawl data, please contact us at info at archive dot org and let us know who you are and what you?re hoping to do with it. We may not be able to say ?yes? to all requests, since we?re just figuring out whether this is a good idea, but everyone will be considered. |||||Summary:

– European leaders today lauded President Obama's plan to limit the size and risk-taking of the nation's banks, but stock markets worldwide were rattled. Asian markets fell sharply today and European markets opened down, following a 213 point drop in the Dow yesterday, its biggest 2-day loss since March. Europeans said they'll seek an international agreement to avoid competing bank policies that, aiming to shore up stability, would put one country at a disadvantage. Bankers fear the proposal, which would prevent commercial banks from running hedge funds and private equity firms, and separate commercial and investment banking within the big firms, will mean an end to huge profits in the financial sector, the Times of London reports. "It's like a child who is being told not to do something," the editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac tells BusinessWeek. "'Don't take my toy away'—that's a natural reaction."


– "Get Lucky" could very well be New Zealand's theme song, at least when it comes to its national airline. CNN reports that for the fourth time, Air New Zealand has captured first place in AirlineRatings.com's 2017 Airline Excellence Awards, which rated airlines around the world on criteria including safety, environmental leadership, financials, and in-flight innovations. "Air New Zealand came out number one in virtually all of our audit criteria, which is an exceptional performance," site editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas says in a release. Here, others in the top five: Air New Zealand Qantas Singapore Airlines Cathay Pacific Airlines Virgin Australia/Virgin Atlantic More that earned top honors here.

Expand this summary.

Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Airline of the Year 2017: Air New Zealand – Air New Zealand was named Airline of the Year for the fourth year in a row in AirlineRatings.com's 2017 Airline Excellence Awards. Editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas said the Kiwi airline "came out number one in virtually all of our audit criteria." Hide Caption 1 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Cabin Crew: Virgin Australia and Virgin Atlantic – Virgin Australia and Virgin Atlantic held onto their Best Cabin Crew crown. In 2016 AirlineRatings.com praised them as a "benchmark of what cabin service should be." Hide Caption 2 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Business Class: Virgin Australia – Virgin Australia was awarded Best Business Class for 2017, replacing Singapore Airlines at the top of the leaderboard. Hide Caption 3 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best First Class and Best Long Haul (Middle East/Africa): Etihad Airways – Relative newcomer Etihad Airways has impressed with its premium offerings, which AirlineRatings.com said made it a "major force in the airline industry" in 2016. It won Best First Class and Best Long Haul (Middle East/Africa). Hide Caption 4 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best In-Flight Entertainment: Emirates Airlines – Stealing the title from Singapore Airlines, Emirates Airlines was also awarded Best In-Flight Entertainment for 2017. Hide Caption 5 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Domestic Airline Service: Qantas – Qantas scored a hat trick with three wins in 2017, including Best Domestic Airline Service. Hide Caption 6 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Lounges: Qantas – Having been an industry leader when it installed showers in its lounges some decades ago, Qantas won fresh praise from AirlineRatings.com in 2016 for its robust broadband Internet access -- something other airlines' lounges fell down on. Hide Caption 7 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Catering: Qantas – Qantas won Best Catering for the third year in a row. It offers four main meal options in economy class and customers can order online ahead of the flight. Hide Caption 8 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Long-Haul Airline (Americas): Delta Airlines – Delta Airlines has held on to its title of Best Long-Haul Airline in the Americas. AirlineRatings.com's Geoffrey Thomas said in 2016 that Delta Air Lines has emerged as "a new force in international travel with new energy, in-flight product and new aircraft." Hide Caption 9 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Best Long-Haul Airline (Asia): Singapore Airlines – Singapore Airlines was named Best Long-Haul Airline in Asia. AirlineRatings.com said in 2016, "The airline has always listened to its customers and it shows again and again." Hide Caption 10 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Value and Safety in Low-Cost Airlines (Asia): Scoot – Singapore Airlines owns low-cost carrier Scoot, which was awarded for Value and Safety in Low-Cost Airlines (Asia). CNN's Richard Quest (pictured left, in hat) flew with them during his budget round-the-world trip in 2016. Hide Caption 11 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Value and Safety in Low-Cost Airlines (Asia): Norwegian – Norwegian was honored for value and safety in the low-cost airline sector. In April 2016, CNN's Richard Quest named Norwegian as one to watch due to its expansion into low-cost long-haul. Hide Caption 12 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Value and Safety in Low-Cost Airlines (Africa): Scoot – South-African budget airline Kulula.com, known for its striking green livery, launched in 2001. This year it's been honored for value and safety in the low-cost sector. Hide Caption 13 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards EVA Air: Top 10 airline – The Taiwanese airline was named one of AirlineRatings.com's top 10 airlines for 2017. It's made headlines for quirky innovations such as its family of Hello Kitty jets Hide Caption 14 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards All Nippon Airlines: Top 10 airline – Also a fan of fun livery, as showcased in its family of "Star Wars" jets, All Nippon Airlines also made it into the top 10 list. Hide Caption 15 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Cathay Pacific: Top 10 airline – Hong Kong's flag carrier Cathay Pacific was honored in the top 10 list for 2017. Hide Caption 16 of 18

 Photos: 2017 Airline Excellence Awards Lufthansa: Top 10 airline – Germany's flag carrier and Europe's largest airline, Lufthansa was honored in the top 10 list. Hide Caption 17 of 18 ||||| News

 The AirlineRatings.com team are amongst the first when it comes to sharing the latest breaking aviation news. We cover a range of aviation related topics such as airline crashes, new aircraft, airline reviews, changes to an airlines in flight product, airline safety, and general aviation interest stories and videos. As AirlineRatings.com is a global site, we will focus on country wide and global news stories, rather than local stories.

 Follow us on Twitter and be updated on the latest airline and airline safety news. You can also sign up to receive our weekly newsletter, featuring our top aviation news stories, latest reviews, breaking news and competitions. If you are from an airline, travel agency or want to contact us about a news story, you can do so here. |||||


The government plans to order emergency inspections today of 80 older Boeing 737s similar to the Southwest Airlines jet that suffered a 5-foot tear in its roof on Friday in a search for possibly dangerous cracks.

 The Federal Aviation Administration order will cover some 737-300s, 737-400s and 737-500s, models of the popular jet built in the 1980s and 1990s. The jets covered under the order include those built with a specific manufacturing process and with more than 30,000 flights, the agency said Monday.

 There are about 175 of the aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are registered in the USA, the FAA said. Southwest operates 78 of the jets and Alaska Airlines has two. Boeing said it is also working on a bulletin to airlines suggesting inspections.

 Although the number of jets affected by the order is small, some aviation safety experts said the incident is shining a new light onto aging aircraft safety.

 Despite more than two decades of efforts to better understand and detect cracks, the tear on the Southwest jet occurred in an area that was not considered high risk.

 "This could change the conversation regarding the risk of aging aircraft," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation. The FAA last year toughened the standards for aging aircraft, but the latest discovery could lead to even broader requirements for costly inspections, Voss said.

 "Last Friday's incident was very serious and could result in additional action depending on the outcome of the investigation," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

 Southwest Flight 812 lost cabin pressure at 34,000 feet and had to make an emergency descent into thicker air after leaving Phoenix for Sacramento. A flight attendant was injured, but none of the 118 passengers was hurt.

 National Transportation Safety Board investigators found additional cracks on the same seam in the skin where it ripped open, NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said. Southwest also found similar cracks on three additional 737-300s and grounded the jets, the airline said.

 The jet involved in the accident appeared to have suffered corrosion from moisture that got into the joint where two thin bands of aluminum skin were joined, Sumwalt said. Rivet holes had also become slightly enlarged, he said.

 "It indicates that something is going on in that joint that should not be going on," Sumwalt said.

 The FAA ordered the inspections be done with an electro-magnetic process that detects cracks invisible to the naked eye.

 As of Monday afternoon, Southwest had returned all but 14 of its 737-300s to service. ||||| The federal government on Tuesday will order emergency inspections on 175 Boeing 737 airliners, and is rethinking its approach to plane inspections after a Southwest Airlines jet tore open in mid-flight Friday night, ABC News has learned.

 Inspections will initially focus on 175 planes, used by airlines around the world, that make frequent takeoffs and landings. Eighty of the planes are in service in the United States, most of them for Southwest Airlines.

 The government is particularly concerned about older 737-300, 737-400 and 737-500 jets that have taken off and landed more than 30,000 times. Jets that have accumulated many flight cycles are apparently more likely to develop the sort of fatigue cracks that may have caused the tear in the skin of the Southwest 737-300 last week.

 As the nation's planes age, more jets could cause concern and require inspection for such fatigue cracks.

 Inspectors use something called eddy current technology, passing an electric current through an aircraft's skin to look for small cracks. If any warning signs are detected, more sophisticated ultrasound and X-ray tools are then used for a closer examination. In some areas, a plane's skin can be as thin as a nickel.

 Fatigue Cracks Found in Three Other Southwest Jets

 Southwest said today that it has inspected some 90 percent of its 737-300s, which were removed from service after the weekend. So far, inspections have uncovered fatigue cracks in three planes, the airline said. 64 other planes have been inspected and returned to service, with a dozen other planes still requiring inspection. The airline believes its inspection process complies with the government's order.

 Due to the voluntary grounding, Southwest has had to cancel at least 600 flights since Friday's emergency landing.

 Southwest flight 812, enroute from Phoenix to Sacramento, Calif., was diverted to a military base at Yuma, Ariz., after a section of the plane's fuselage ripped open, depressurizing the plane and exposing the sky to passengers.

 Last night, another Southwest flight was diverted. The flight, headed from Oakland, Calif., to San Diego, Calif. made an emergency landing because of a burning electrical smell.

 Meanwhile, the five-foot section of the plane's fuselage that opened up Friday on flight 812 is headed back to Washington, D.C., for detailed microscopic analysis.

 The jet came apart at a seam, where two pieces of metal are riveted together, which is an especially dangerous location because the plane can essentially unzip, experts said.

 "We have clear evidence that the skin separated at the lower rivet line," Robert Sumwalt, a NTSB Board member, said.

 The 15-year-old damaged aircraft had been through more than 39,000 takeoffs and landings -- each of which puts stress on an aircraft's skin.

 "When airplanes take off and land, aircraft are pressurized. The internal cabin is expanded and contracts just a little bit," said Steve Ganyard, a former military pilot. "You're exercising the skin of that aircraft."

 Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor Boeing requires an intensive inspection to check for fatigue cracks on the section of passenger jet that tore open Friday, ABC News has learned.

 After the incident Friday, the revelation calls into question the inspection program for aging U.S. aircraft.

 The Southwest jet had what is known as a D-check in March 2010, the most comprehensive check for an airplane.

 Based on modeling and previous flight experience of Boeing 737-300s, it was believed that the cracks could not develop in this area of the plane.

 Those cracks, which can develop after repeated takeoffs and landings, may well have been what caused the fuselage to fail, according to some experts.

 "Now we may have to look at airplanes in places we never thought we would have to check before," said Ganyard, an ABC News consultant.

 Other fuselage cracks were found and repaired on this particular aircraft during heavy maintenance in March 2010, according to The Associated Press.

 Upon review of the records of the repair, ABC News discovered at least a dozen fuselage crack repairs.

 Southwest now says that what was seen with Flight 812 was a new and unknown issue.

 "Boeing has since identified an inspection program for this section of the aircraft," Southwest said in a statement. "Based on this incident and the additional findings, we expect further action from Boeing and the FAA for operators of the 737-300 fleet worldwide."

 Southwest Flight 812 Drops 20,000 Feet in Four and a Half Minutes

 On Friday's harrowing flight, the first 20 minutes all appeared normal as the plan climbed to 36,000 feet. Flight attendants had just taken drink orders when the plane's 118 passengers reported hearing loud pops. Then, with the plane at approximately 34,000 feet, the roof opened up near the luggage compartment and oxygen masks dropped in front of passengers. At least one flight attendant passed out.

 Passenger Wade Allemand said he almost passed out.

 "Your ears instantly start to hurt really bad. You feel like you're going to black out," he said.

 The crew turned the jet sharply to the right, pushed the nose down, losing more than 20,000 feet in just four and a half minutes.

 Passengers had a short amount of time to get their oxygen masks on.

 "It depends on what the decompression is. Sometimes it's minutes, sometimes it's two to three seconds," Lauren Jarmoszko, a flight safety instructor, said.

 Loss of oxygen impacts cognition, memory and reaction time. It can also lead to brain damage.

 In a rapid decompression, like the Southwest flight, the oxygen mask drops quickly. There are also instances of slow decompression which is usually caused by a small leak in a window or door seal. Passengers and crew may not even notice the first effects: fatigue, mental confusion, and dulled reflexes.

 The captain on Flight 812 had 19 years experience with Southwest, while his first officer had seven years of experience, and he received assistance as typical when declaring a emergency, according to the NTSB.

 Some terrified passengers clearly thought it was the end. One woman whose husband was on the plane received a text from him -- "Plane going down. Love you."

 However, the plane was able to land at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station/International Airport at 4:07 p.m. Friday, said Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration.

 Passengers applauded the pilots upon landing, called loved ones and waited for a new Southwest jet to pick them up and take them on their way.

 ABC's Jessica Hopper contributed to this report.

 Click here to return to the "World News" page. |||||

Write a summary.

– The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered emergency inspections of 80 older Boeing 737s similar to the Southwest plane that suddenly cracked open last week during a flight. The order covers aircraft built with a specific process in the '80s and '90s and those that have more than 30,000 flight cycles, ABC News reports. Some 78 of the jets in question belong to Southwest Airlines—which has carried out its own inspections—and two are being used by Alaska Airlines. Inspectors must use an electro-magnetic process that detects cracks invisible to the naked eye. Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor Boeing currently requires checks to be carried out on the section of aircraft that cracked open. The incident "could change the conversation regarding the risk of aging aircraft," and lead to tougher, more expensive inspections, the president of the Flight Safety Foundation tells USA Today.


Here is a news article: Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter received medical attention for dehydration while in Winnipeg on Thursday, where he is helping build a Habitat for Humanity home.

 The statement from the organization said that Carter was being rehydrated in hospital, and his wife was with him.

 A Habitat volunteer told CBC News he saw Carter, 92, collapse after he'd been working in the sun for about an hour, using a handsaw to cut wood for a staircase.

 Carter's bodyguards rushed over and carried him to a nearby vehicle. Shortly afterwards, firefighters and paramedics were seen scrambling, and an ambulance arrived.

 The media was pushed back from the view of Carter before the ambulance left the site, followed immediately by his motorcade.

 Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter received medical attention for dehydration while in Winnipeg on Thursday, where he is helping build a Habitat for Humanity home. 2:15

 A motorcade of black vehicles remained parked outside the emergency doors at St. Boniface Hospital.

 A spokesperson for Habitat for Humanity told media that Carter was taken there as a precaution, for observation. The former president has told the organizers he is feeling fine.

 "He's asked us to continue with our day," said Jonathan Reckford, CEO for Habitat for Humanity International.

 "He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building."

 Rosalynn Carter is escorted to a waiting van outside Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital on Thursday. Her husband, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, is in the city to work with Habitat for Humanity. (CBC)

 Carter — the U.S. president from 1977 to 1981 — and his wife, Rosalynn, are longtime supporters of Habitat for Humanity and are helping the not-for-profit organization with a build in the city.

 They were scheduled to be part of the build for Thursday and Friday. There has been no word if those plans have changed.

 Reckford said any further information on Carter's condition will have to come from the Carter Center, a not-for-profit organization founded by the ex-president.

 President Jimmy Carter's motorcade parked outside the emergency entrance to St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. (Cameron MacIntosh/CBC)

 The last time Carter was in Manitoba was 1993, when he lent a hand at the construction sites for 18 other Winnipeg homes through the Habitat organization.

 The couple already made a stop this month in Alberta to help with builds in Edmonton.

 The projects are part of a Habitat for Humanity "blitz" aiming to build 150 new homes — including 25 in Manitoba — between July 9-14 to commemorate Canada 150.

 Carter started Thursday by leading a morning prayer service from 8-8:30 a.m. Construction is set to wrap up at 4:30 p.m. for the day. ||||| Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was taken to a Winnipeg hospital Thursday morning, after the 92-year-old appeared to feel faint while working on a Habitat for Humanity house.

 WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jimmy Carter with volunteers at the Habitat for Humanity work site in Winnipeg on Thursday.

 "President Carter has been working hard all week. He was dehydrated working in the hot sun," Habitat officials said in a statement.

 "As a precaution, he was transported to St. Boniface General Hospital for rehydration. Mrs. Carter is with him," the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and The Carter Centre said in a statement.

 Carter had been working in the sun for about 90 minutes when he went to sit down on a chair. As he sat, he appeared to wobble; Secret Service agents supported him, and whisked him back to where his motorcade was parked.

 After a few minutes, a waiting ambulance pulled to the back of the house, near where the president was sitting. The ambulance remained on site as paramedics walked over to attend to the president.

 The ambulance later left the site without lights or sirens. His motorcade followed the ambulance down the back lane. A number of Secret Service officers remain on site.

 Carter informed build leaders that he is feeling "OK," according to Habitat International CEO Jonathan Reckford, and encouraged volunteers to continue on with their regular workday.

 Vehicles in former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's motorcade and Winnipeg police vehicles are seen outside the emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital Thursday. (Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press)

 'Pleased to be here'

 Earlier, Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn made their first public appearance in Winnipeg this morning, welcomed by the sound of thunderous applause.

 The Carters, who will stay in Winnipeg through Friday to work on a Habitat for Humanity build, arrived at the St. James work site shortly before 8 a.m. to lead a morning devotional.

 "I just wanted to say how pleased we are to be here," Rosalynn Carter said to the over 500 volunteers gathered under the site's kitchen tent to greet them.

 "Somebody just asked us if we could see the change in Winnipeg from the time when we were here before (in 1993), but we don't remember," Rosalynn, 89, said with a laugh. "It was a long time ago."

 The former president opened by offering greetings from his home church of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., and extended a special invitation to the volunteers.

 "You're all welcome to come (to the church)," said Carter, the 92-year-old former president who served his term in 1977-1981, and added a wink: "Not all on the same Sunday, but you're all welcome."

 WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is assisted by Secret Service after he appeared to feel faint while working on a Habitat for Humanity house in Winnipeg

 Only minutes after finishing the devotion, the Carters joined the crew at the house that will become home to Todd Gauthier and his daughters Chloie and Carmin, aged nine and seven.

 Under the watchful eye of a team of Secret Service agents, Gauthier and the volunteers gathered for a brief chat with Carter before picking up their saws and hammers.

 "He just introduced himself, and said he wants to get going on the work and get it done," Gauthier said, while the Carters worked on sawing boards for the front steps.

 "It was just straightforward, wanting to get the project going and complete it. It's pretty cool."

 That home, designated as the "Carter House," is located at the construction site on Lyle Street where 21 Winnipeg houses are being built as part of Habitat for Humanity and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.

 25 houses to be constructed in Manitoba

 A total of 25 houses are taking shape in Manitoba as part of a total 150 homes across the country to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary. Eight of the homes will house Indigenous families.

 WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter work with volunteers taking part in construction on Lyle Street Thursday morning as part of the Habitat for Humanity’s 34th Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.

 Carter and his wife have volunteered since 1984 with Habitat for Humanity to build houses in places such as Winnipeg.

 Five hundred volunteers will be working each day in Winnipeg out of a pool of about 1,600 who have signed up.

 Successful applicants for Habitat homes must pay market value for their homes through a pay schedule that’s based on income. At least one adult must be working full time and have been doing so for at least the past two years.

 Other requirements are a housing need, 500 hours of sweat equity, a willingness to be completely transparent in the transaction, and children in the household.

 The process is intense and intrusive in the hope it’ll avoid setting a family up for failure, said Sandy Hopkins, the chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity Manitoba.

 After the houses are constructed, volunteers will make way for professionals to complete the final touches such as plumbing, electrical and heating.

 In the 36 years since Carter left the White House, Carter and the nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization called the Carter Centre that he founded in 1982 have helped people in more than 80 countries by resolving conflicts, advancing democracy and human rights, preventing disease and improving mental health care.

 The former U.S. president and first lady were in the Winnipeg in 1993 and helped build 18 Habitat homes in the North End. After Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan, Carter and his wife started volunteering with Habitat and created the Carter Work Project to officially volunteer every year for a week.

 Winnipeg was the couple's first Habitat build outside of the United States. Since then, the Carters have participated in builds in other countries, including Mexico, South Korea, India, the Philippines and Haiti.

 melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

 — with files from Ashley Prest |||||
A summary of this is?

– Jimmy Carter was hospitalized in Canada after he collapsed while building a Habitat for Humanity home Thursday in Winnipeg, CBC reports. The 92-year-old former president was using a handsaw to cut wood for a staircase at the time. The reason given for Carter's collapse was dehydration. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, which has video of the incident, Carter had been working in the sun for about 90 minutes. Habitat for Humanity states Carter was taken to the hospital as a precaution and the former president is doing fine. "He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building," Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford says.


Summarize this article:

Chicago woman was real-life stalker from 'The Natural'

 Ruth Ann Steinhagen, the Chicago woman who shot an ex-Cubs player in 1949 and inspired 'The Natural' story, dies at 83

 The 19-year-old's crime, which put a spotlight on stalking crimes, nearly killed Waitkus, 29, and temporarily sidetracked his career. The incident also helped to draw attention to "baseball Annies" — young, hero-worshipping groupies who would pursue major league ballplayers, often relentlessly.

 The Chicago woman whose near-fatal 1949 shooting of former Cubs first baseman Eddie Waitkus inspired the book and movie "The Natural" died with the same anonymity with which she lived for more than half a century.

 Ruth Steinhagen "mops" the floor of a cell in Cook County Jail, where she is being held in the shooting of baseball star Eddie Waitkus. The photo is staged for news cameras, because the mop and floor are dry. (Chicago Tribune)

 However, from the time that Ruth Ann Steinhagen left Kankakee State Hospital in 1952 after undergoing nearly three years of psychiatric treatment, she disappeared into near obscurity — so much so that one of her final next-door neighbors said he lived there for more than 15 years before learning her history.

 Steinhagen, who never spoke publicly about the Waitkus incident after her release from the hospital, spent much of her final 42 years living in a modest house on the Northwest Side with her parents and sister.

 She died Dec. 29 at Swedish Covenant Hospital of a subdural hematoma caused by an accidental fall in her longtime home, a Cook County medical examiner spokeswoman said. She was 83.

 Her death had gone unreported and was only discovered when the Tribune was searching death records for another story.

 "She was never social," next-door neighbor Chris Gentner said. "I talked to her and we knew each other, but she really wasn't the type of person who would sit down and talk to you."

 Gentner said it was only recently that he learned of Steinhagen's notorious past.

 "I was amazed. I then looked her up and saw all that stuff. Interestingly, where I grew up in New York was real close to where they made parts of 'The Natural.'"

 Born Ruth Catherine Steinhagen in Cicero on Dec. 23, 1929, Steinhagen was the daughter of die-setter Walter Steinhagen and his homemaker wife, Edith, both of whom had emigrated from Berlin in their early 20s, according to Chicago author John Theodore's 2002 Waitkus biography, "Baseball's Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus." She spent two years at Waller High School before earning a diploma from Jones Commercial High School, now Jones College Prep.

 At some point in her teens, Steinhagen, who had begun using the middle name Ann, became obsessed with Waitkus, who then was a first baseman for the Cubs. After the Cubs traded Waitkus to the Phillies before the 1949 season, Steinhagen's obsession with him intensified.

 "Ruth has a place in Chicago crime history because of the good old-fashioned moxie she used to carry out her plan — to kill Eddie Waitkus," Theodore said via email Thursday. "Here's a 19-year-old girl, living by herself in a tiny apartment on Lincoln Avenue, in 1949. She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he's from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. ... He's Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs."

 It all came to a head June 14, 1949, when the Phillies were in town to play the Cubs. Steinhagen, then a typist for the Continental Casualty insurance company in the Loop, attended the game that day. After the game, she sent Waitkus an unsigned note summoning him to a 12th-floor room in the now-demolished Edgewater Beach Hotel, where the Phillies were staying. When Waitkus arrived at 11:30 p.m., Steinhagen told Waitkus from behind the door, "I have a surprise for you," and then used a .22-caliber rifle that she had purchased at a pawnshop to shoot him just below the heart. ||||| She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she'd never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him.

 FILE - In this June 18, 1949 file photo, Ruth Steinhagen, 19, held in the shooting of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus at a Chicago hotel on June 14, 1949, writes notes for her life history... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Feb. 27, 1950 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus, right, shows scars resulting from an operation following his shooting in Chicago in 1949, to his roommate, outfielder... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this June 17, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus smiles from his bed in Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago as his father, Stephen, holds up his arm for an attempted... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Aug. 19, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus acknowledges the applause of fans at Shibe Park as he stands by gifts showered on him on "Eddie Waitkus Night"... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this June 16, 1949 file photo, Ruth Steinhagen, 19, is seen at felony court in Chicago where she appeared for her hearing on charges of assault with intent to murder in the shooting of Philadelphia... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this June 30, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus sits in a wheelchair in felony court in Court during a hearing for Ruth Steinhagen, left, who is alleged to have... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this June 21, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus, with help from nurses at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago, takes his first steps since he was shot June... (Associated Press)

 After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.

 The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Friday that Steinhagen passed away of natural causes on Dec. 29, at the age of 83. First reported by the Chicago Tribune last week, her identity was a surprise even to the morgue employees who knew about the 1984 movie "The Natural," in which she was portrayed by actress Barbara Hershey.

 "She chose to live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," John Theodore, an author who wrote a 2002 nonfiction book about the crime, wrote in an email Sunday.

 The story, with its elements of obsession, mystery, insanity and a baseball star, made it part of both Chicago's colorful crime history and rich baseball lore.

 The story began with what appeared to be just another young woman's crush on Eddie Waitkus, the Chicago Cubs' handsome first baseman. So complete was this crush that the teenager set a place for Waitkus, whom she'd never met, at the family dinner table. She turned her bedroom into a shrine to him, and put his photo under her pillow.

 After the 1948 season, Waitkus was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies _ a fateful turn. "When he went to the Phillies, that's when she decided to kill him," Theodore said in an interview.

 Steinhagen had her chance the next season, when the Phillies came to Chicago to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. She checked into a room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel where he was staying and invited him to her room.

 "We're not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about," she wrote in a note to him after a game at Wrigley on June 14, 1949.

 It worked. Waitkus arrived at her room. After he sat down, Steinhagen walked to a closet, said, "I have a surprise for you," then turned with the rifle she had hidden there and shot him in the chest. Theodore wrote that she then knelt by his side and held his hand on her lap. She told a psychiatrist afterward about how she had dreamed of killing him and found it strange that she was now "holding him in my arms."

 Newspapers devoured and trumpeted the lurid story of a 19-year-old baseball groupie, known in the parlance of the day as a "Baseball Annie." Among the sensational and probably staged photos was one showing Steinhagen writing in her journal at a table in her jail cell with a framed photograph of Waitkus propped nearby.

 A judge determined she was insane and committed her to a mental hospital. She was released three years later, after doctors determined she had regained her sanity.

 Details about the rest of her life are sketchy. She lived with her sister in a house just a few miles from the hotel where she shot Waitkus. A neighbor told Theodore that Steinhagen said she worked in an office for 35 years but never revealed her employer. And she made an effort to conceal her privacy, often refusing to answer the phone or come to the door when Theodore knocked.

 Chris Gentner, a neighbor who used to help the Steinhagen sisters with chores, said he only found out who she was 15 years after they began living nearby.

 "I found out through my ex-wife _ I'm not sure how she found out _ and I looked (Steinhagen) up online. And as soon as I saw (her photograph) online I said, `That's her,'" Gentner said.

 The 1984 movie was based on a novel by Bernard Malamud that was inspired by the story. Theodore's 2002 book was entitled "Baseball's Natural: The story of Eddie Waitkus."

 Waitkus, who played the season after he was shot, helping the Phillies win the National League pennant, decided not to press charges in 1952 when Steinhagen was deemed sane. The trial would have likely made banner headlines _ particularly since Malamud's novel was released in 1952 _ so Watikus' decision almost certainly assisted Steinhagen's disappearance into obscurity.

 He died in 1972, 12 years before Redford portrayed Roy Hobbs, the character inspired by Waitkus.

 "He hardly ever talked to his family about Ruth," Theodore said. |||||

– An obsessed baseball fan's near-fatal attack on her idol became a movie—but the fan herself quietly died three months ago. Ruth Ann Steinhagen, whose story inspired the Robert Redford movie The Natural, was 83 when she died Dec. 29 of a subdural hematoma that arose after a fall in her home, reports the Chicago Tribune. The paper talks to the biographer of the Philadelphia Phillies' Eddie Waitkus, who explains the depth of her obsession: "She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he's from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. ... He's Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs." In 1949, at age 19, she was in a Chicago hotel where Waitkus was staying. She managed to slip him a note telling him she had "something of importance to speak to you about," and he visited her room. When he sat down, she told him she had a surprise for him; she took a rifle from the closet and shot him in the chest, then held his hand, the AP reports. She was ruled insane and spent three years in a psychiatric hospital. Following her release, she worked in an office and lived with her sister. Even workers at the morgue didn't at first realize who she was, the AP notes. "She chose to live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," says a baseball historian. Waitkus, on the other hand, kept on playing—and the Phillies won the pennant that year. The Tribune, which first reported her death, notes that it accidentally stumbled upon her death record while researching another story.


– Male tigers are a lot like human men when it comes to sex. They're shy and awkward about their bodies if they haven't spent a lot of time around female tigers. They take libido enhancers when they get older. And, if a partner their own age isn't doing it for them, they consider trading them in for a younger, prettier tiger. BBC News reports India's Alipore zoo is having a difficult time getting its 10-year-old white tiger Vishal to mate. The zoo has tried vitamins and even de-worming him; nothing seems to be working. Experts are blaming the fact that Vishal was born in captivity, meaning he doesn't have much experience with females and might not understand the biological signals his body is sending, according to the Times of India. Plus, Vishal is at the outer limits of breeding age for tigers. This is apparently frustrating to Rupa, a female white tiger the zoo has assigned to breed with Vishal. While in heat, Rupa will chase, touch, and scratch Vishal, but he "runs away with his tail between his legs," a veterinary consultant tells the Times. Zoo staff have been trying to mate the two tigers for six months, and it's important they succeed because the zoo's tiger population is getting older and hasn't had a birth in more than a decade. Now, staff are considering trying Vishal out with a much younger Bengal tiger named Rani, who is described as having "a very beautiful face," the BBC reports. Ouch, Rupa.

Expand this summary.

Image caption Kolkata zoo has three white tigers, including two females

 Officials at the Alipore zoo in the Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta) say their attempts to mate a young tiger have been unsuccessful with the big cat showing little interest in mating.

 Vishal, the 10-year-old white tiger, has so far spurned the advances of tigress Rupa, living in the adjoining enclosure, an official told the BBC.

 Libido enhancers have also failed to spur him into action, he said.

 Experts blame his "shyness" on the fact that Vishal has been bred in captivity.

 "For the past six months we've been trying to mate Vishal," Dayanarayan Banerjee, who retired as the senior veterinary officer at the zoo and is now working as a veterinary consultant there, told the BBC.

 "We have de-wormed him to improve his overall health. We have given him libido enhancers, including vitamin D, A and E. But he is shy and no libido has been noticed in him," he said.

 Mr Banerjee says this is the first time an attempt has been made to mate Vishal - the only male in the breeding age in the zoo - but perhaps he is a bit too old to mate.

 "The most suitable age for a tiger to mate is when he is five-six years old. Seven-eight-year-olds also succeed. But beyond the age of 10 years, it is very difficult."

 Mr Banerjee said when Vishal was introduced to eight-year-old Rupa, he was "friendly enough" and "displayed no sign of hostility", but that's where the contact ended.

 "Rupa was willing, but Vishal was reluctant," he added.

 Mr Banerjee says he is "not sure Vishal will deliver" but zoo authorities are not yet giving up on the exercise.

 "We are considering introducing him to Rani, she is a Bengal tigress, and she has a very beautiful face. But she is in an enclosure that's far away from Vishal's and we are awaiting a decision on whether we can move her to a nearby enclosure." ||||| Zeeshan Jawed

 KOLKATA: His intimidating roar terrifies humans but his partner's mating call breaks him into a cold sweat. Officials at Alipore zoo are faced with a rather strange situation where one of their young male tigers is showing little or no interest in mating despite several not-so-subtle hints dropped by his female partner. No amount of aphrodisiac or libido stimulant has been successful in making him, er, rise to the occasion. Vishal and Rupa are the young white tiger couple in this much-anticipated captive breeding project. Alipore zoo has five tigresses and only three tigers. Vishal and Rupa, aged 10 and eight, were selected for their youth and vigour after the State Zoo Authority gave permission to resume captive breeding last year. But Vishal's performance — or the lack of it — has come as a major downer. "We chose Vishal because he is the youngest and physically the most well-built among the male tigers. But we cannot understand what happens to him when he sees Rupa. He runs away with his tail between his legs," said Dayanarayan Banerjee, senior veterinary officer at the zoo. Medical officers and zoo keepers who have been closely monitoring the behaviour of the tiger and the tigress, said that when Rupa enters her oestrus cycle — a period of "heat" when she is sexually receptive and makes advances — Vishal shows zero interest. "Once Rupa enters her oestrus cycle, she makes mating calls and tries to get close to Vishal. She scratches his back with her nails, tries to make physical contact and even chases him. But Vishal runs in the opposite direction," said Banerjee. After noticing his indifference, medical officers administered vitamins A and E last year to enhance Vishal's sexual appetite. When that did not get his blood thumping, the doctors administered a libido enhancer but even that did not lift Vishal's mood. "None of it worked. Vishal kept snubbing Rupa's advances," said a zoo official. Perplexed, zoo authorities consulted experienced veterinary officers and specialists who attributed his demeanour to shyness due to captivity and not necessarily to lack of virility. "Vishal has grown up in captivity due to which he has never interacted with the opposite sex earlier. He is shy and often unable to understand the biological signals his body is giving him," said a big cat specialist in the forest and wildlife department. The breeding of tigers in the zoo is very important for several reasons, say veterinary officers. "Mating is a biological need of any living being and it is required to stay healthy. Second, the big cats in the zoo are not getting any younger. If we want a younger generation of tigers here in the years to come, we have to work on it right now," said Banerjee. The last time a tiger cub was bred in the zoo was more than a decade ago. Though several big cats were young at that time and ready to procreate, senior officials in the wildlife department were not willing to take any risk lest the tigers injure each other during the mating. When some officials have taken the initiative now, the age and the attitude of the tigers does not permit that. "Tigers can be ferocious during mating. They may harm their partner if they get over excited or angry about something. Most of the directors over the last decade did not want to take any risk and kept postponing the mating process," said a senior official in the department. The breeding of tigers has become a challenge for zoo officials who have otherwise achieved major successes with giraffes, zebras, macaws and barking deer. "We have a good mix of these animals where the young ones are regularly spawning. In case of lions and tigers we do not have the same advantage because most of them are past their prime," said Kanai Lal Ghosh, director of Alipore zoo. The zoo authorities aren't about to give up on Vishal yet — maybe a much younger tigress will get his mojo working. Officials are toying with the idea of setting up Vishal with the much nubile Rani. "She is young and full of vigour. We are hoping she will succeed in enticing Vishal," said a veterinary officer. The question is will Vishal rise to the occasion this time?

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Here is a news article: David White/REX/Shutterstock

 Razza the rat nearly ended James Russell’s scientific career. Twelve years ago, as an ecology graduate student, Russell was releasing radio-collared rats on to small islands off the coast of New Zealand to study how the creatures take hold and become invasive. Despite his sworn assurances that released animals would be well monitored and quickly removed, one rat, Razza, evaded capture and swam to a nearby island.

 For 18 weeks, Russell hunted the animal. Frustrated and embarrassed, he fretted about how the disaster would affect his PhD. “I felt rather morose about the prospects for my dissertation,” he says.

 Although there was a lot of literature on controlling large rat populations, little had been written about tracking and killing a single rodent, which turns out to be rather important in efforts to completely eradicate a species. “It demonstrated how hard it is to catch that very first rat as it arrives on an island — or, conversely, the very last rat that you’re trying to get off,” says Russell, now at the University of Auckland.

 Razza’s escape became the subject of a paper in Nature1 as well as a popular children’s book. And now, with more than a decade of successful pest-eradication projects behind him, Russell is taking on a much bigger challenge. He is coordinating research and development for a programme that the government announced last July to eliminate all invasive vertebrate predators — rats, brushtail possums, stoats and more — from New Zealand by 2050 to protect the country’s rare endemic species.

 Joel Sartore/NGC

 The audacious plan is not as far-fetched as it sounds, says Josh Donlan, director of Advanced Conservation Strategies, a consultancy that has designed invasive-species eradication projects in Europe, South America and the United States. Around the world, more than 1,000 islands have been cleared of invasive species through ‘mega eradications’. And New Zealand, home to some of the leading experts in the field, carried out more than 200 of them. With enough money, time and political will, Donlan says, it should be possible to clear the entire country.

 But the size of this latest target represents a tremendous leap. The largest island ever cleared is Australia’s Macquarie Island, which covers about 128 square kilometres. New Zealand’s total area is about 268,000 square kilometres, and the country’s cities and towns complicate eradication efforts and provide countless places in which animals can hide.

 “With current techniques, it’s not feasible,” says Richard Griffiths, an ecologist based in Auckland with the environmental group Island Conservation. To scale up, new approaches will be required.

 LISTEN New Zealand wants to rid itself of all its invasive pests on a tight deadline. Hear how it plans to do it. You may need a more recent browser or to install the latest version of the Adobe Flash Plugin.

 That’s where Russell and his colleagues come in. They are about to start a major research project to develop some of the necessary technologies, such as new baits, species-specific poisons and genetic tweaks that interfere with animal fertility. To succeed, the project will require public and political support — and money. In a 2015 paper2, the team estimated the entire cost at around NZ$9 billion (US$6 billion), arguing that the savings to pest-control programmes, and the reduction in environmental damage and crop loss, would more than cover the outlay. Their argument has been convincing. “Our government just grabbed that paper, and the surrounding evidence and public goodwill, and announced this policy,” Russell says. “It’s been pretty hectic here ever since.”

 A dying wish

 New Zealand is a poster child for the havoc wrought by invasive species. For millennia it was an island of small lizards and flightless birds, such as the iconic kiwi. Since land mammals, including humans, first arrived some 750 years ago, the number of species of native vertebrate fauna have nearly halved — at least 51 species of bird have disappeared in that time. Losses sped up dramatically after Europeans arrived in the late eighteenth century.

 The mammalian pests are a drain on New Zealand’s economy. The government spends around NZ$70 million each year on pest-control programmes for animals, and invasive predators cost the country an estimated NZ$3.3 billion a year in lost productivity3. Most of the losses come from agriculture, but government officials also worry about the hit to the country’s reputation as a destination for unspoilt natural beauty. “Last year, tourism overtook agriculture as our biggest revenue earner,” says Maggie Barry, the minister of conservation. “Our environment is what attracts people here.”

 Although the environmental and economic arguments had been around for some time, many people credit physicist Paul Callaghan with getting the public to back eradication plans. Callaghan was an eminent scientist and a household name in New Zealand — a sort of Kiwi David Attenborough — writing popular books and presenting television shows about science and innovation. In a public address in 2012, he encouraged New Zealanders to save the nation’s native fauna by eradicating its invasive pests. “It’s crazy and ambitious but I think it might be worth a shot,” he said. The address would be his last; he died of cancer a few months later.

 Callaghan’s plea caught the public’s imagination, tapping into a groundswell of support for local conservation programmes designed to protect native birds and other animals.

 Joel Sartore/NGC

 A lot of the techniques for clearing an island are well established. The standard practice for killing rats and other invaders is to lace bait stations with a poison — usually sodium fluoroacetate, known as 1080, or the anticoagulant brodifacoum — and to spread the poison across the landscape by helicopter. The few animals that survive the chemical onslaught are caught in traps or shot. The active phase of eradication is very quick. It takes just a few days to spread the bait, and within a few weeks all the invaders are gone, says Griffiths. Most of the time is spent on preparation. “You generally have just one chance to get it right,” he says, mainly because of the high cost. “So 90% of the work is planning and logistics.”

 In 2011, Griffiths reached the end of a four-year project costing NZ$3.5 million4 to eradicate all invasive mammals from Rangitoto and Motutapu, two inhabited islands with a combined size of 38 square kilometres. After two years of planning and consultations with local people, rats were wiped out in 3–4 weeks; conservationists then moved on in stages to deal with rabbits, stoats, hedgehogs and feral cats. The effort was complicated by the presence of human inhabitants, and by the islands’ proximity to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, which provides a deep pool of potential reinvaders.

 “The ferry goes there six times a day, with hundreds of people, and boats pull up every weekend,” says Russell. Hitchhiking rats and mice are intercepted about once a year, but the island has remained pest-free for the past five.

 New technologies

 Tackling all of New Zealand isn’t just about scaling up efforts. “We’re good at killing things,” says Barry, “but we’ll rely on scientific breakthroughs to get us over the line.” Some of the first innovations that Griffiths would like to see are new baits, poisons and traps, as well as tools for detecting invaders. The poison 1080 has been in widespread use since the 1950s and is an effective pesticide, but it can kill game animals such as deer and pigs (which are also introduced species, but not the target of eradication efforts); it also threatens the kea (Nestor notabilis), a native alpine parrot. Many hunters and animal-rights groups oppose use of the chemical, especially when it is sprayed from helicopters.

 “Something that targets only rats or mice would be wonderful,” Griffiths says. For possums, Russell and his colleagues plan to sequence the creature’s genome in the hope of identifying targets unique to its marsupial biology.

 Traps could be improved by developing devices that need minimal human intervention. A New Zealand company called Goodnature already makes rat and possum traps with a skull-crushing piston that is powered by compressed gas. It can reset itself 24 times (clean-up is provided by scavenging birds and cats). Russell’s colleague Andrew Kralicek is working on wireless electronic biosensors that can detect species-specific molecules given off by a pest. Such devices could be used to monitor traps or send warnings about new invaders.

 Joel Sartore/NGC

 And drones, which have already been used to monitor sheep herds in the country, could be fitted with those biosensors to sniff out targets and quickly drop a precise dose of poison. This could be useful in areas where releasing tonnes of laced bait by helicopter is not feasible. “That’s kind of a Skynet future,” says Russell, “but it could work in pest control.”

 The ideas that are generating the most excitement in conservation circles are genetic biocontrols that might be able to suppress invaders by introducing harmful traits. The powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 could be used to disrupt a gene that is vital for survival or reproduction or that makes an animal more susceptible to a certain poison. Then, using what is known as a gene drive, scientists could engineer that gene to spread through the population. “It can go from 1% to 100% of the population in around 10 generations,” says Ethan Bier, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, who is using gene drives to engineer mosquitoes that are resistant to the malaria parasite5.

 So far, gene drives have been used only in the lab and mostly with insects, but there is nothing to suggest that they wouldn’t work in the wild on possums or rats. The problem, says Bier, is that once you start introducing harmful traits, you’re fighting against evolution, which tends to eliminate problematic mutations. There is also the danger of reverse invasions. The possums that have become invasive in New Zealand originated in Australia. If some sort of gene-driven ‘suicide possum’ made its way back there, it could wreak havoc on the native populations.

 Another genetic technique, being developed in New Zealand as part of Russell’s project, could avoid some of these difficulties. The Trojan Female Technique targets mitochondria, the tiny power plants inside cells. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA can seriously impair the ability of sperm to swim. Because these mutations affect the fitness only of males, and because mitochondria are passed down only through the female line, these traits can survive natural selection. Females carrying the mutations would have sterile male offspring, but their daughters would be able to breed, producing yet more sterile males.

 Daniel Tompkins, an ecologist in Dunedin, New Zealand, and his colleagues have already shown in computer models and lab experiments that this technique can work in fruit flies6: a single release of Trojan females kept population numbers low over ten generations, with no sign of natural selection fighting back.

 Of course, when it comes to mammals, releasing thousands of Trojan female rats would be counterproductive: those rats would be just as much of a threat to the ecosystem as the ones you’re trying to get rid of. So Tompkins, who works for Landcare Research, a government research institute, sees it more as a coup de grâce — a way to prevent pest populations from recovering after they have been cut back by conventional techniques. Once the numbers are small, releasing a few Trojan females would cap population regrowth, he says. Those small populations might then simply die out naturally, or survive at such low levels that they would no longer pose a threat to native species.

 Back-yard battles

 All these techniques are several years away from large-scale deployment, and none is a silver bullet, cautions Russell, who says that the answer will be to use a mixture of methods, staggered over a long period. “What might be the cheapest or most appropriate in the forest won’t be the most appropriate in someone’s back yard,” he says.

 And getting access to those back yards will make or break the project, says Donlan. An eradication has to be close to 100% successful for it to work, and that means getting buy-in from almost everyone concerned. If any large groups of people refuse to cooperate with the plan, areas could be left uncleared, providing havens for invaders. “The all-or-nothing nature of eradication makes social issues more important and challenging,” says Donlan. “Support has to be greater than just a simple majority.”

 That’s an area where New Zealand is relatively lucky, says Russell. The country is already home to thousands of volunteer community groups that spend their free time setting and checking traps. People in the Wellington suburb of Crofton Downs, for example, think that the region is already free of predators after they managed to get a trap placed in every fifth back yard. “We’re in a relatively unique position in New Zealand, where people are really, really willing to kill for conservation,” Russell says. “It’s kind of a national pastime.”

 “People are really willing to kill for conservation. It’s kind of a national pastime.”

 Nevertheless, some aspects of the project could test the limits of public support. Biocontrol techniques for mosquitoes, for example, have faced stiff opposition from residents in Florida and Brazil. New Zealanders may be heavily in favour of conservation, but they are generally suspicious of genetic engineering7. And gene-drive technologies are controversial throughout the world.

 Then there’s the money. The government and philanthropic groups have committed to donate about NZ$3 billion by the 2050 deadline — well short of the NZ$9 billion that Russell estimates would be needed. But the government hopes that further scientific breakthroughs will bring the cost down.

 Russell is sure those breakthroughs will come. He points out that the first rat eradication was achieved on a 1-hectare island off New Zealand in 1963, at a time when no one thought it would be possible. “We don’t know how we’ll do it in 2050, but back in 1960 we didn’t know we’d be doing what we were doing in 1980 or 2010,” he says.

 In some ways, it is his experience with Razza that gives him hope. Although the rat was eventually caught in a decidedly low-tech way — a convenient penguin carcass proved to be irresistible bait — the hunt forced Russell’s team to refine cutting-edge techniques that are still in use. For example, biosecurity dogs can hunt down individual hold-outs, and genetic sequencing of faeces can identify remaining populations.

 “I am proud to look back and see how far we’ve come in just ten years,” he says. ||||| Antipodes Island has been cleared of its estimated 200,000-strong mouse population.

 Photo: RNZ/Ian Telfer

 Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has declared the island officially mouse free.

 Mice arrived on Antipodes Island, 820km southeast of New Zealand, on shipwrecks and sealing ships in the 1800s.

 Since then they have wiped out two species of insect and pushed some sea birds to breed on nearby pest-free islands.

 Photo: wikipedia

 A $4 million project to get rid of the mice started in 2014. Eradication work got underway in 2016.

 Ms Sage said a Department of Conservation team spent a month searching the island for rodents and returned to Dunedin yesterday announcing they had found none.

 "This is huge news for conservation both in New Zealand and internationally," Ms Sage said.

 Ms Sage said 21 species of breeding sea bird, four unique land birds, and more than 150 species of insect were found on Antipodes Island.

 "They can now thrive with mice no longer preying on the insects or competing with the land birds," she said. ||||| New Zealand Eradicates Invasive Mice From Antipodes Islands

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons

 The Antipodes had a mouse problem. But no more.

 New Zealand, which owns the subantarctic archipelago, says its years-long effort to rid the rodents has finally paid off.

 "This is huge news for conservation both in New Zealand and internationally," said conservation minister Eugenie Sage.

 The Antipodes Islands, a World Heritage Site located about 470 miles south of the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island, once had a major infestation – some 200,000 mice "preyed on bird chicks and eggs, invertebrates, and plants," The New Zealand Herald says.

 The government says the mice are the only mammalian pest species on the remote islands and that were "likely accidentally introduced in 1893 from a ship wreck or one of the many [seal hunting] gangs."

 To reverse the infestation, in 2014 Wellington launched the "Million Dollar Mouse" project to raise funds to rid the islands of mice. The New Zealand public kicked in $250,000, WWF NZ provided another $100,000, and the Morgan Foundation matched donations dollar for dollar. The rest of the funding came from New Zealand's Department of Conservation, the Herald said.

 The newspaper writes: "The five-year project involved preparations and hut repairs, a helicopter bait-drop in June 2016, and post-eradication monitoring by just-returned teams that searched the island for a month and found no sign of mice."

 "The subantarctic islands are remote, but the role they play in global conservation as the home for so many unique species can't be overstated," Department of Conservation project manager Stephen Horn said.

 Twenty-one species of breeding seabirds – including the majestic but critically endangered Antipodean wandering albatross, as well as more than 150 species of insects — nearly one in five unique to the islands — will be among the beneficiaries of the the successful eradication project, Sage said.

 Since the 1990s, New Zealand has steadily made progress on clearing invasive species from its subantarctic islands – including the removal of rats, mice, rabbits, cats goats and stoats (a small, carnivorous weasel).

 In 2016, the country announced an ambitious plan to eliminate all such invasive species from New Zealand by 2050.

 According to National Geographic, "By 2025, the New Zealand government hopes to suppress or remove invasive predators from an additional 2.5 million acres (one million hectares) of land—and completely remove all introduced predators from the country's island nature reserves. The government hopes to finish the job by 2050 largely through the widespread use of traps and poisoned bait, though New Zealand is ready to innovate: It's a world leader in developing new ways to eradicate invasive mammals." ||||| View a map of Anitipodes Island

 The problem

 Tristan albatross chick on subantarctic Gough Island being eaten alive by mice

 Mice were the only mammalian pest species on the remote Antipodes Islands. They were most likely accidentally introduced in 1893 from a ship wreck or one of the many sealing gangs. Mice were abundant on the main Antipodes Island with an estimated population of 200,000 over the 2012 ha island.

 Mice were responsible for the lack of invertebrates on the main Antipodes Island relative to the mouse free offshore islands, causing local extinctions. They competed with the island's unique land bird species; pipit, parakeet and snipe, by competing for food.

 Mice were also known to eat the eggs and chicks of seabirds and were implicated in the deaths of albatross chicks on other subantarctic islands like Gough Island. Research on Antipodes Island has shown that mice eat huge numbers of invertebrates and seeds of plants that are critical to the health of the islands.

 Million Dollar Mouse - the problem

 The partners

 Moved by his learnings during the Our Far South journey to Antarctica and the subantarctic islands, Gareth Morgan was motivated to raise a million dollars towards the eradication of mice from Antipodes Islands.

 The New Zealand public raised $250,000 and WWF gave $100,000 towards the project. The Morgan Foundation matched their donations and brought other key partners together to raise enough money to get the project underway with the rest of the final cost funded by DOC. Island Conservation also joined the team as another key sponsor.

 Non-toxic bait trial winter 2013

 Checking non-toxic bait uptake on the endemic Antipodes parakeet

 Antipodean wandering albatross pair

 The project

 In the winter of 2016, a 13-strong eradication team arrived on the main Antipodes Island. They used helicopters to spread cereal bait containing the rodent toxin brodifacoum from specialised under-slung bait-spreading buckets. They covered the island in two separate applications.

 In February 2018, two mice breeding seasons after the program was delivered, a monitoring team arrived to determine the project’s outcome.

 They deployed 200 inked tracking tunnels and searched the island for three weeks with two rodent detection dogs from the Conservation Dogs Programme supported by Kiwibank and the Auckland City Council.

 No mice were detected, confirming the Million Dollar Mouse campaign successfully eradicated mice from Antipodes Island in the New Zealand Subantarctic.

 Media release 21 March 2018: Million Dollar Mouse successfully eradicates mice from Antipodes Island

 Related links |||||
A summary of this is?

– A subantarctic archipelago is making "huge news": The New Zealand Herald reports there are officially no more mice on the country's Antipodes Islands, which once housed up to 200,000 of the rodents. They caused a big threat to the World Heritage Site by preying on native birds, bugs, and plants, and the five-year effort to do away with them got an assist from the public, with the "Million Mouse Project" fundraising campaign bringing six figures. The Department of Conservation explains that cereal bait laced with rodent toxin was dropped via helicopter on the island during the winter of 2016. A team scoured the island last month looking for any mice and found none. "This is huge news for conservation both in New Zealand and internationally," says New Zealand Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage. She says more than two dozen types of birds, 21 uncommon plants, and more than 150 insect species will benefit. Both Radio New Zealand and NPR note the mice originally found their way to the Antipodes either on 19th-century ships or via a shipwreck and proceeded to purge the island of at least two insect species, as well as to displace some seabirds to other islands. The initiative in the Antipodes isn't a stand-alone: The island nation has also gotten rid of other invasive species in the name of boosting biodiversity, including goats, rats, cats, rabbits, and a local meat-eating weasel. New Zealand's ultimate goal is to rid itself completely of all invasive pests by 2050, per Nature. (Scientists are bashing in the heads of invasive iguanas in Florida.)