A wildlife official handles a baby turtle that was found along with other turtles in a suitcase at the airport before they could be smuggled from the Galapagos Islands, in Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador March 29, 2021.
via REUTERS
Nearly 200 baby tortoises were discovered in a suitcase by officials at a Galapagos airport Sunday.
Officials said they believed the hatchlings were removed from tortoise nests on Santa Cruz Island.
The tortoises have been sent to the Giant Tortoise Breeding and Rearing Center to be cared for.
Officials at an airport on the Galapagos Islands discovered 185 newborn tortoises hidden in a suitcase going through a security X-ray.
A wildlife official handles baby turtles that were found in a suitcase at the airport before they could be smuggled from the Galapagos, in Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador March 29, 2021.
The animals had been wrapped individually in plastic to limit their movement and detection, a Galapagos Conservancy statement said. At least 10 of the tortoises had died by the time officials discovered the suitcase.
Wildlife officials estimate most of the tortoises are between one- to six-months-old, including some that appear to be newly hatched.
A wildlife official measures a baby turtle that was found along with other turtles in a suitcase at the airport before they could be smuggled from the Galapagos Islands, in Santa Cruz.
via REUTERS.
Ecuador's Ministry of Environment and Water said in a statement that five additional tortoises have died since the hatchlings were discovered, according to CNN. The outlet reported the additional deaths could be due to stress from being separated from their habitat.
Wacho Tapia, the director of conservation at Galapagos Conservancy, said he thinks the tortoises were removed from tortoise nests on Santa Cruz Island.
Baby turtles are seen in crates.
via REUTERS
He also said the young tortoises were found in "dreadful condition" and appear to be extremely underweight.
The conservancy is in the process of collecting size and weight data for each tortoise to better assess its health condition.
Galapagos giant tortoises are the largest living tortoises in the world, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
In this photo released by Galapagos National Park, giant tortoises stand moments after release to their original habitat on Isla Espanola, Galapagos National Park, Ecuador, Monday, June 15, 2020.
The current population size for the giant tortoises is only 10-15% of its historical number, the Galapagos Conservancy said, due to past exploitation of the animals.
The surviving hatchlings have been sent to the Giant Tortoise Breeding and Rearing Center on Santa Cruz Island where they will be cared for.
A wildlife official handles a baby turtle that was found along with other turtles in a suitcase at the airport before they could be smuggled from the Galapagos Islands, in Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador March 29, 2021.
via REUTERS
The center is managed by the Galapagos National Park Directorate, according to CNN, and park veterinarians and guardians will keep a close eye on the remaining tortoises.
A police officer has been arrested in connection to the incident, according to CNN.
Baby turtles are seen in a pen.
via REUTERS
The outlet reported that the suspect will be charged with crimes against wildlife, according to the Ministry of the Environment and Water. The suspect could face a sentence of up to three years in prison.
There are only 20,000-25,000 wild tortoises left living on the islands, according to estimates by the Galapagos Conservancy.
Wildlife officials handle baby turtles.
via REUTERS
The conservancy said it is working closely with authorities to increase security around the natural tortoise nesting sites to prevent future trafficking attempts.
A wildlife official handles baby turtles.
IBM is joining the growing list of tech companies planning to take a flexible approach to remote work even after the pandemic, though it does have concerns about how the strategy could impact its company culture.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg's Emily Chang on Wednesday 80% of the company's employees may stay in hybrid roles indefinitely, spending "at least three days a week, maybe not all eight to 10 hours, but at least some fraction of those three days, in the office."
Krishna said 10% to 20% of employees could potentially stay fully remote, but that he worried "about what's their career trajectory going to be."
"If they want to become a people manager, if they want to get increasing responsibilities or if they want to build a culture within their teams, how are we going to do that remotely?" Krishna told Bloomberg.
IBM's HR chief, Nickle LaMoreaux, had told Insider in February that most employees would need to come into the office "from time to time," but that few would need to come in five days a week.
Currently, Krishna told Bloomberg, IBM has around 15% of its global workforce coming into the office "some" of the time, while "about 5% never went home."
Regardless, Krishna added, the transition to a long-term hybrid model "is not going to happen overnight," adding that parents can stay fully remote until schools reopen.
IBM is also planning to scale back its brick-and-mortar footprint as it plans for employees spending less time in the office, cutting a significant portion of the 70 million square feet of office space and 1,000 locations it had before the pandemic, according to Bloomberg.
"I would imagine that we will get rid of tens of millions," Krishna told Bloomberg, referring to square feet of office space. "Are we going to go toward zero, absolutely not. Will we have over half of what we had, most likely."
IBM was a pioneer in the work-from-home revolution before it largely abandoned the policy in 2017, but the company is pivoting again as others in its industry rethink how and where people will work post-pandemic.
Twitter and Salesforce are among some of the tech firms embracing a more remote workforce for the foreseeable future, while Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Uber recently announced plans to start bringing employees back to their corporate headquarters (though many of these companies' frontline workers were never granted permission to work from home or faced disparate healthcare and paid leave or remote work policies that prevented them from doing so).
Netflix closed on a massive deal for two sequels to the 2019 blockbuster "Knives Out," with Rian Johnson set to direct and Daniel Craig featuring again as Benoit Blanc, according to Deadline and Variety.
Netflix spent $450 million on the sequels, according to the reports, making it one of the largest streaming-movie deals ever.
According to Deadline, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix bid on rights to the sequels. The first film, acquired by Media Rights Capital and distributed through Lionsgate, cost $40 million and grossed $311 million. The first sequel will begin shooting in Greece on June 28, and casting will now start.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
President Joe Biden exercised his power on his first day in office with a series of executive orders, already ticking off some items on his agenda and undoing his predecessor's legacy.
Many of Biden's first actions in office have targeted former President Donald Trump's policies.
"There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face," Biden said on day one. "That's why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families."
Issuing executive orders is typically among presidents' first duties. Biden outpaced Trump, who on his first day in office signed only one order, to begin a reversal of the Affordable Care Act, which ultimately was unsuccessful.
Biden took the reins of the presidency during a tumultuous period for the nation, still reeling from the deadly Capitol riot and the coronavirus pandemic. The new president repeated calls for unity in his inauguration ceremony and issued a proclamation declaring Wednesday a "National Day of Unity."
Beyond bridging political divides, Biden has the monumental task of combatting a raging public-health crisis. More than 400,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US.
Wearing a mask at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Biden kicked off his pandemic response with a "100 Days Masking Challenge" and issued a mask mandate in federal buildings.
This graphic categorizes all of Biden's executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations. If you click on an action, it will take you to the full text and details from the White House. We'll keep it updated.
On day one, Biden also rejoined the Paris climate accord, an international treaty that the Obama administration adopted and Trump abandoned. And Biden stopped the US's withdrawal from the World Health Organization, which Trump had initiated last summer after accusing the United Nations agency of cozying up to China.
Biden extended an eviction moratorium and student-loan-payment deferments to support Americans struggling financially during the pandemic.
Since those actions were presidential statements or agency directives, they aren't included in the graphic. You can find all of Biden's statements, actions, and directives on the White House website, or in the Federal Register.
A controversial past vote by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has taken on new significance following reports that the Republican lawmaker is under federal investigation over whether he violated sex trafficking laws.
The Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz, 38, had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and violated federal laws against sex trafficking in the process, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
This isn't the first time Gaetz has taken heat over trafficking.
In 2017, Gaetz was the lone member of Congress to vote against an anti-human trafficking bill that gave the federal government more money to fight the illegal trade across the country.
The Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act designated a trafficking prevention coordinator at the Department of Transportation and created a committee to develop best practices for states and transportation stakeholders to combat human trafficking.
The Senate unanimously passed the bipartisan bill in 2017, after which it went to the House of Representatives, where it passed - though not unanimously - 418 to 1. Former President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in January 2018.
Gaetz was the only representative to vote against the bill.
Florida's two senators at the time, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio, were both co-sponsors of the Senate version of the bill.
Following the vote, Gaetz defended his solo stance in a Facebook Live video broadcast. The lawmaker said he voted against the bill because it represented "mission creep" in creating the committee at the federal level.
"Unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that our existing agencies in the federal government can't handle that problem, I vote no because voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government," Gaetz said.
The representative also pointed to his former role as chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee in the Florida Legislature where he made it easier for prosecutors to bring charges against traffickers in the state.
Now Gaetz faces an investigation by the Department of Justice over whether or not he violated sex-trafficking laws during his alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
"The allegations against me are as searing as they are false. I believe that there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to criminalize my sexual conduct, you know, when I was a single guy," Gaetz said to Axios, confirming the investigation.
Gaetz has been quick to deny the allegations against him and claims the investigation is part of "an organized criminal extortion" scheme against him. In a series of tweets responding to news of the investigation, Gaetz said the probe is based on "lies" being pushed against him by a former Justice Department official.
Reports of the criminal inquiry come just hours after Axios reported Gaetz was "seriously" considering early retirement from Congress to take a job at far-right media network Newsmax.
Gaetz provided the following statement to Insider Tuesday night:
"Over the past several weeks my family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name. We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI's direction to catch these criminals. The planted leak to the New York Times tonight was intended to thwart that investigation. No part of the allegations against me are true, and the people pushing these lies are targets of the ongoing extortion investigation. I demand the DOJ immediately release the tapes, made at their direction, which implicate their former colleague in crimes against me based on false allegations."
A New York judge ruled that the state's COVID-19 vaccination rollout policies that excluded prisons unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine and ordered the state to immediately begin vaccinating inmates.
Bronx Supreme Court Justice Alison Y. Tuitt called leaving out inmates "unfair and unjust" and an "abuse of discretion," in a ruling Tuesday.
The state has allowed corrections staff to get vaccinated as well as other groups in close congregate living settings like nursing homes, but inmates who are also high risk were excluded.
Tuitt said the protocol "irrationally distinguished between incarcerated people and people living in every other type of adult congregate facility, at great risk to incarcerated people's lives during this pandemic."
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed last month from two Rikers Island inmates.
As of Tuesday, A total of 6,314 incarcerated people have tested positive for COVID-19 with 35 deaths, according to state data. Additionally, 4,951 staff have contracted the virus, with eight deaths.
Governor Andrew Cuomo's office did not reply to Insider's request for comment but told ABC News that as of Tuesday 822 of 1,066 inmates 65 years or older were vaccinated, more than a month after the state allowed elderly inmates to be vaccinated.
On March 5, the state also allowed inmates with comorbidities to get a vaccine.
CBS reported that so far, 7,538 prison staff members had received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to 3,374 people who are imprisoned.
