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A key conservation group counted the continent’s elephants as two species for the first time, highlighting the dire threat to forest elephants.

The threat of extinction has diminished the odds of spotting one of these wood-dwelling elephants in recent decades, according to a new I.U.C.N. Red List assessment of African elephants released Thursday.

The new assessment is the first in which the conservation union treats Africa’s forest and savanna elephants as two species instead of one.

While some African elephants parade across the savanna and thrill tourists on safari, others are more discreet. They stay hidden in the forests, eating fruit.

The threat of extinction has diminished the odds of spotting one of these wood-dwelling elephants in recent decades, according to a new I.U.C.N. Red List assessment of African elephants released Thursday. The Red List categorizes species by their risk of forever vanishing from the world. The new assessment is the first in which the conservation union treats Africa’s forest and savanna elephants as two species instead of one.

Led by Dr. Gobush, the assessment team gathered data from 495 sites across Africa. A statistical model let them use the elephant numbers from each site to see broader trends for both species.“We essentially looked at data from as far back as possible,” Dr. Gobush said. The I.U.C.N. aims for three generations of data to get a full picture of an animal’s well-being. But for the long-lived elephants, that’s a challenge. The average savanna elephant mother gives birth at 25 years; forest elephant moms are 31 on average. Because the earliest surveys researchers could find were from the 1960s and 1970s, they could peer back only two generations for savanna elephants, and a single generation for forest elephants.

No one is quite sure. But for some reason, a herd of 15 Asian elephants has been lumbering its way across China for more than a year, traveling more than 300 miles through villages, forest patches — and, as of 9:55 p.m. on Wednesday, the edges of the city of Kunming, population 8.5 million.

It’s the farthest-known movement of elephants in China, according to experts. Where they’ll go next, no one knows. When they’ll stop? Also unclear.

What is certain is that they have captivated Chinese social media, jolted local officials and caused more than $1.1 million of damage. They have also left elephant researchers scratching their heads.

Joseph Carey Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, was born in Leicester 150 years ago.

we still know very little about the condition that caused his deformities.

Merrick left his remains to science but previous attempts to extract DNA failed because the skeleton was bleached to clean it.

Emperor Shah Jahan lay sick, confined to his palace. Outside, the armies of his four sons clashed in bloody battle. Although the emperor would recover, his own victorious third son killed off the other brothers and held the emperor under house arrest for the remaining eight years of his life.

During Aurangzeb's childhood, however, Mughal politics made life difficult for the family. Succession did not necessarily fall to the eldest son; instead, the sons built armies and competed militarily for the throne. Prince Khurram was the favorite to become the next emperor, and his father bestowed the title Shah Jahan Bahadur or "Brave King of the World" on the young man.

In 1622, however, when Aurangzeb was four years old, Prince Khurram learned that his step-mother was supporting a younger brother's claim to the throne.

His contribution? A single chart that describes 30 years of world economic history. Some have called it “the most important chart in economics.” But it has an even catchier nickname: “The Elephant Curve.”

The chart — yes, it’s pachydermically shaped — lines up all of humanity according to their incomes (at least between 1988 and 2008). The good news: Everyone has gotten richer. The less good news: Some have gotten richer much, much faster than others.

Milanović’s data work has enabled new insights into the nuts and bolts of how global capitalism works: He has overturned decades of economic orthodoxy to show that inequality in fact rises and falls in waves as countries develop

The need for change in museums was pointed out in the 2022 Burns Halperin Report, published by Artnet News in December, that analyzed more than a decade of data from over 30 cultural institutions. It found that just 11 percent of acquisitions at U.S. museums were by female artists and only 2.2 percent were by Black American artists

Julia Halperin, one of the study’s organizers, who recently left her position as Artnet’s executive editor, said that the industry has an asymmetric approach to diversity. “The pool of artists is diversifying somewhat, but the pool of staff critics has not,” she said.

the matter of diversity in criticism is compounded by the fact that opportunities for all critics have been diminished.

While earlier generations might have taken their cues from classmates or magazines, tweens and teens now see their peers on platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.

And it’s spawning viral moments in retail, as evidenced by last week’s release of limited-edition Stanley tumblers at Target. Fans lined up outside stores before sunrise to nab the cup made in collaboration with Starbucks, and arguments broke out at a handful of locations. T

This age group also is snapping up pricey makeup and skin care, even products usually reserved for “mature” skin. That’s given rise to viral TikToks from exasperated adults.

The Day the Republican Party Died

Where were you the night Donald Trump killed the Republican Party as we knew it? Trump was right where he belonged: in the gilt-draped skyscraper with his name on it, Trump Tower in Manhattan, basking in the glory of his final, definitive victory.

To his left, stopped for the night, was the golden escalator he’d ridden down when he announced his campaign last June with a rambling, unscripted address that invoked the “rapists” he said were pouring over the Mexican border, beginning what would be an uninterrupted series of shocks to the political system.

Milanović’s data work has enabled new insights into the nuts and bolts of how global capitalism works: He has overturned decades of economic orthodoxy to show that inequality in fact rises and falls in waves as countries develop. He also shows that inequality within countries is now becoming more significant than inequality between countries for describing the state of the global rich and poor.

This is at the heart of the populist uprisings of 2016, he says: “Our incomes are increasingly determined globally, but our political space is national.”

The chart — yes, it’s pachydermically shaped — lines up all of humanity according to their incomes (at least between 1988 and 2008). The good news: Everyone has gotten richer. The less good news: Some have gotten richer much, much faster than others. They’re the ones on the elephant’s trunk.

what about us "experts?" What have we learned? Are there really any significant new insights? Do we know much more today than we did a generation ago?

France uplifted the downtrodden people of Algeria and Indo-China

My generation was deeply influenced half a century ago by economists and mathematicians. We scholars all wanted to be - and particularly to show -- that we had mastered all the techniques of our professions as social scientists, that we could build models, make graphs, juxtapose trends, etc. After all, we were writing our learned books and essays for our academic colleagues and our paymasters, not for those we were describing. So, at least those who were paid by our government and its proxy think tanks often became, as the English say, "too clever by half." They and their counterparts in universities, after all, had to prove their "smarts" in order to get funded, promoted or kept on

At first, the attack had all the hallmarks of a typical Boko Haram assault. Armed fighters stormed a town on the border with Nigeria, shooting every man they saw.

Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group terrorizing this part of the world, is on the hunt — for food.

After rampaging across the region for years, forcing more than two million people to flee their homes and farms, Boko Haram appears to be falling victim to a major food crisis of its own creation.

Throughout history, few names have inspired such terror as "Tamerlane." That was not the Central Asian conqueror's actual name, though. More properly, he is known as Timur, from the Turkic word for "iron."

vicious conqueror, who razed ancient cities to the ground and put entire populations to the sword. On the other hand, he is also known as a great patron of the arts, literature, and architecture.

The child's father, Taragay, was the chief of the Barlas tribe. The Barlas were of mixed Mongolian and Turkic ancestry, descended from the hordes of Genghis Khan

As lawmakers around the world debate how best to fight climate change, one goal is rapidly becoming standard: net-zero emissions by 2050.

That means that greenhouse gases would be dramatically reduced — most likely by using a combination of switching from coal and gas to wind and solar, becoming more energy-efficient and putting taxes or fees on carbon — and whatever remains would be offset by planting trees or using budding technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

two key problems remain: the worst polluters, including the United States, haven’t yet signed on, and most places still need to figure out the details of how they will reach their goal.

Mr. Stern, who’s worked at the Manhattan Institute for more than two decades, tendered his resignation from its flagship publication, City Journal. “This is very important. It’s about the future of our country. It’s about the degradation of language and ideas,” Mr. Stern insisted. He, along with several others I spoke to, felt the think tank and City Journal were acting like Sweden in the face of the Trump threat.

“This now seems to be the only way for me to protest the magazine’s intellectual abdication on the most urgent crisis facing the nation today: the election of an unfit, dangerous man to the presidency, plus the myriad ways in which the forces of Trumpism and Bannonism are tearing the country apart,” Mr. Stern wrote in a resignation letter

to one journalist previously published by City Journal, that doesn’t justify the way the publication has responded to the Trump presidency. “While City Journal’s desire to sit out the Republican civil war was perfectly understandable, it is not a viable long term option now that Donald Trump is president,” he wrote me. “A political journal in the Trump era” that hardly engages with the president “isn’t like ignoring a 900-pound elephant. It’s like ignoring an invasion from Mars.”

The Illicit Global Ape Trade

Mr. Stiles found an Instagram account offering dozens of rare animals for sale, including baby chimpanzees and orangutans dressed in children’s clothes. He sent an email to an address on the account — “looking for young otans” (the industry standard slang for orangutans) — and several days later received a reply.“2 babies, 7.5k each. Special introductory price.”

Such ape shows are a growing business in Southeast Asia, despite international regulations that prohibit trafficking in endangered apes.

Because the state and city had reopened restaurants, Josh, who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy, assumed that local health officials had figured out a patchwork of precautions that would make indoor dining safe.

They were listening to the people they were told to listen to—New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently released a book about how to control the pandemic—and following all the rules.

Josh was irritated, but not because of me. If indoor dining couldn’t be made safe, he wondered, why were people being encouraged to do it? Why were temperature checks being required if they actually weren’t useful? Why make rules that don’t keep people safe?

The training puts a spotlight on the unexpected challenges that store workers have been forced to grapple with during the pandemic.

Susan Driscoll, president of the Crisis Prevention Institute, said the online training program and accompanying Covid-19 Customer Conflict Prevention credential are “really focused on how to engage your thinking brain over your emotional brain.

ENTERING the Worcester Art Museum, the first thing a visitor sees is a sixth-century late Roman mosaic, more than 20 feet square, set into the floor of the entrance hall.

This spectacular and brutal scene paved the floor of a private house in Antioch, founded in 300 B.C. and one of the great cities of the classical world. Today ancient Antioch lies beneath the modern Turkish city of Antakya, near the Syrian border at the northeast elbow of the Mediterranean. The mosaic, along with other equally stunning and tantalizing glimmers of an almost mythical place, arrived in Worcester nearly 60 years ago.

Four silver-gilt tyches on display -- female deities personifying the good fortune of a particular city -- representing Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch attest to Antioch's status. Sculptures, mosaics, jewelry and intriguing inscriptions, most of them from the second to the sixth centuries A.D., bring to life a complex metropolis that thrived in an era whose economic, political and spiritual circumstances were in many ways similar to our own.