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30 kwietnia
 Trójkołowiec wpadł do sztucznego kanału w Itaj al-Barud w Egipcie. Zginęło ośmioro dzieci, a cztery osoby zostały uratowane.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Rosyjski minister spraw zagranicznych Siergiej Ławrow stwierdził, że sankcje muszą zostać zniesione w ramach negocjacji pokojowych między Ukrainą a Rosją.

29 kwietnia
 W wyniku zbombardowania meczetu w Kabulu w Afganistanie zginęło 10 osób, a 15 zostało rannych.
 Sześciu żołnierzy i czterech rebeliantów z Koalicji Patriotów na rzecz Zmian zginęło podczas strzelaniny w placówce wojskowej w Bakouma w Republice Środkowoafrykańskiej.
 Prezydent Rosji Władimir Putin przyjął zaproszenie na zbliżający się szczyt G20 na Bali w Indonezji, pomimo inwazji Rosji na Ukrainę. Na szczyt zaproszono także ukraińskiego prezydenta Wołodymyra Zełenskiego.

28 kwietnia
 Dziewięć osób zginęło, a 13 zostało rannych po tym, jak dwie bomby eksplodowały w dwóch autobusach z większością szyicką w Mazar-i Szarif w prowincji Balch.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Miały miejsce dwa potężne eksplozje w Kijowie po tym, jak Rosja przeprowadziła ataki rakietowe podczas wizyty w mieście sekretarza generalnego ONZ António Guterresa. Co najmniej dziesięciu cywilów zostało rannych, a dziennikarz Radia Wolna Europa/Radio Wolność zginął.
 Dritan Abazović został nowym premierem Czarnogóry.
 Mały meteor poruszający się z prędkością około 55 tys. mil/h (88 514 km/h) eksplodował nad zachodnim stanem Mississippi w Stanach Zjednoczonych, powodując kilka gromów dźwiękowych.

27 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Ukraińskie Siły Powietrzne uderzyły w wieżę telewizyjną w Chersoniu pociskiem rakietowym, tymczasowo zmuszając rosyjską telewizję do wyłączenia anteny w okupowanym obwodzie chersońskim.
 Rosja stwierdziła, że w nocy zaatakowała 59 ukraińskich obiektów zbrojeniowych, w tym w skład w obwodzie zaporoskim, w którym przechowywano broń ze Stanów Zjednoczonych i Europy.
 Rosja stwierdziła, że obrona przeciwlotnicza zestrzeliła ukraiński bezzałogowiec nad obwodem kurskim, podczas gdy w obwodzie biełgordzkim zgłoszono kilka eksplozji i pożar składu amunicji. Ukraina opisała eksplozje w Rosji jako "odpłatę" i "karmę" za inwazję Moskwy.
 Ołeksandr Kobets został de facto merem miasta Chersoń, okupowanego od 2 marca tegoż roku przez siły rosyjskie.
 Gazprom podał, że "całkowicie zawiesił dostawy gazu" do spółek gazowych Polski i Bułgarii "z powodu braku płatności w rublach". Bułgaria, Polska i Unia Europejska potępiły zawieszenie dostaw. Wstrzymanie dostaw gazu do Polski i Bułgarii spowodował wzrost cen gazu ziemnego, a także spowodował, że rubel rosyjski w handlu moskiewskim osiągnął najwyższy poziom w stosunku do euro od 2 lat.
 Republika Środkowoafrykańska przyjęła bitcoin jako legalny środek płatniczy, po tym, jak ustawodawca jednogłośnie zatwierdził ustawę.

26 kwietnia
 20 wyznawców islamu zginęło podczas zamieszek w Gonder w regionie Amhara w Etiopii.
 Pandemia COVID-19: Według stanu na 26 kwietnia liczba potwierdzonych zakażeń na całym świecie przekroczyła 510 milionów, zaś liczba zgonów to ponad 6,2 miliona osób.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Według władz ukraińskich rosyjskie uderzenie rakietowe zniszczyło strategiczny most przez ujście Dniestru w obwodzie odeskim.
 Niemcy zapowiedziały dostawę na Ukrainę 50 czołgów przeciwlotniczych Gepard, pierwszej ciężkiej broni dostarczonej przez ten kraj od początku inwazji Rosji.
 Gazprom zapowiedział, że przestanie dostarczać gaz ziemny do Polski i Bułgarii gazociągiem Jamał–Europa, ponieważ oba kraje odrzuciły rosyjskie żądanie zapłaty za dostawy paliw kopalnych w rublach rosyjskich. Polska nie przewidywała przerw w dostawach gazu ziemnego. Jednak wstrzymanie dostaw gazu do Bułgarii "stanowi poważne wyzwanie dla bezpieczeństwa dostaw do tego kraju", ponieważ Bułgaria jest prawie całkowicie uzależniona od rosyjskiego gazu.
 W wieku 74 lat zmarł Klaus Schulze, pionier rocka elektronicznego.

25 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Miały miejsce dwa duże pożary w rafinerii ropy naftowej i magazynie wojskowym w Briańsku w Rosji.
 Mer Chersonia Ihor Kołychajew ogłosił, że siły rosyjskie przejęły kontrolę nad Radą Miejską Chersonia.
 Po zbombardowaniu przez Rosję rafinerii ropy naftowej w Krzemieńczuku w obwodzie połtawskim zginęła jedna osoba, a 7 zostało rannych. Z kolei władze regionalne podały, że w wyniku nalotów na Żmerynkę i Koziatyn w obwodzie winnickim zginęło pięć osób.
 Elon Musk kupił za 44 miliardy dolarów serwis społecznościowy Twitter udostępniający usługę mikroblogowania. Jest to jedna z największych tego typu transakcji w historii.
 W Strefie Gazy odnaleziono wapienny posąg kananejskiej bogini Anat z 2500 roku p.n.e.

24 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 168 osób zginęło, a 98 zostało rannych podczas trzydniowego starcia między Arabami i nie-Arabami w Zachodnim Darfurze w Sudanie.
 W atakach dżihadystów na posterunki wojskowe w prowincji Soum w Burkina Faso zginęło 15 żołnierzy i cywilów, a około 20 zostało rannych.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Ukraińskie władze stwierdziły, że jedna osoba została zabita w wyniku nocnego ostrzału w obwodzie dniepropietrowskim.
 Sekretarz stanu USA Antony Blinken i sekretarz obrony Lloyd Austin przyjechali na Ukrainę i spotkali się z ukraińskim prezydentem Wołodymyrem Zełenskim. Podczas amerykańskiej wizyty w Kijowie Zełenski został poinformowany o zatwierdzonej nowej pomocy wojskowej dla Ukrainy.
 Druga tura wyborów prezydenckich we Francji przyniosła zwycięstwo urzędującemu prezydentowi Emmanuelowi Macronowi, który uzyskał 58,55% poparcia i pokonał rywalkę Marine Le Pen (41,45%).
 Liberalna, proekologiczna partia Ruch Wolności zwyciężyła w wyborach parlamentarnych w Słowenii.

23 kwietnia
 Synod Kościoła Ewangelicko-Augsburskiego w RP wybrał wiceprezesa i radców Konsystorza w nowej kadencji. Wiceprezesem Konsystorza został dr Emir Kasprzycki.
 Ponad 100 osób zginęło w wyniku eksplozji nielegalnego składu ropy naftowej w stanie Rivers w Nigerii.
 Dziesięć osób zginęło, a 16 uznano za zaginione, gdy łódź wycieczkowa zatonęła u wybrzeży japońskiej wyspy Hokkaido.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Infrastruktura w Odessie na południu Ukrainy była celem ataków lotniczych, w których zginęło co najmniej pięć osób, a 18 zostało rannych.

22 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 33 osoby zginęły, a 43 zostały ranne w zamachu bombowym na meczet w Kunduz w Afganistanie.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Generał major Rustam Minnekajew przyznał, że celem "drugiej fazy" inwazji na Ukrainę jest całkowite zajęcie Donbasu i południowej Ukrainy oraz utworzenie korytarza lądowego z rosyjskim Naddniestrzem, okupowaną republiką separatystyczną, która jest uznawana na arenie międzynarodowej jako część Mołdawii. Dodał, że istniały "dowody na to, że ludność rosyjskojęzyczna jest uciskana" w Naddniestrzu, nie podając dalszych szczegółów w swoich oskarżeniach. Ministerstwo Obrony Ukrainy skrytykowało to oświadczenie i oskarżyło Rosję o imperializm.
 Mer Bałakliji w obwodzie charkowskim został oskarżony przez władze ukraińskie o zdradę za przyjęcie pomocy od rosyjskich sił okupacyjnych. Uważa się, że burmistrz wraz z rodziną uciekł do Rosji.
 W Bośni i Hercegowinie miało miejsce trzęsienie ziemi o sile sześciu stopni w skali Richtera. Epicentrum znajdowało się ok. 30 km na północny zachód od miejscowości Bileća i 15 km na południowy wschód od miasta Stolac, natomiast hipocentrum znalazło się na głębokości 2 km. Nie było doniesień o ofiarach.

21 kwietnia
 W zamachu bombowym na szyicki meczet w Mazar-i Szarif w prowincji Balch zginęło 31 osób, a 87 zostało rannych. Państwo Islamskie przyznało się do zamachu.
 Dżihadyści Boko Haram napadli na miasto Geidam w stanie Yobe w Nigerii, zabijając 12 osób. Kilka budynków zostało zniszczonych, w tym szkoła.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Władimir Putin zakazał swoim żołnierzom szturmowania budynku huty żelaza i stali Azowstal w Mariupolu w obwodzie donieckim, opisując proponowane plany jako "niepraktyczne" i zamiast tego nakazał blokadę tego obszaru.
 Rankiem u wybrzeża Nikaragui wystąpiło silne trzęsienie ziemi i magnitudzie 6,9. Jego hipocentrum znajdowało się na głębokości 5 km. Do trzęsienia doszło ok. 69 km od miasta San Rafael del Sur. Nie było doniesień o ofiarach i zniszczeniach.

20 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 20 osób zginęło, a 50 zostało rannych w starciach w regionie Amhara w Etiopii.
 20 osób zginęło, a co najmniej jedna została ranna, gdy minibus zderzył się z innym pojazdem w stanie Bauczi w Nigerii.
 Sześć osób zginęło, a 19 zostało rannych w zamachu bombowym na targu bydła w stanie Taraba we wschodniej Nigerii. Napastnik również zginął w eksplozji. Państwo Islamskie przyznało się do ataku.
 W wyniku serii wybuchów metanu w KWK Pniówek, zginęło 5 górników, 30 zostało rannych, a 7 uznano za zaginionych.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Doradca prezydenta Ołeksij Arestowycz podał, że Ukraina blokuje próby rosyjskiego natarcia na Słowiańsk.
 Ukraiński negocjator Mychajło Podolak stwierdził, że Ukraina jest gotowa przeprowadzić specjalną rundę negocjacji w Mariupolu w celu "ratowania naszych ludzi, pułku "Azow", wojska, cywilów, dzieci, żywych i rannych".
 W wieku 67 lat zmarła na nowotwór kości Erwina Ryś-Ferens, polska łyżwiarka, medalistka mistrzostw Europy i świata, olimpijka.

19 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Cztery osoby zginęły w rosyjskim ataku rakietowym na osiedle mieszkaniowe w Charkowie.
 Ukraina stwierdziła, że siły rosyjskie rozpoczęły ofensywę militarną w Donbasie. W wielu miastach odnotowano silne eksplozje.
 Co najmniej sześć osób zginęło, a wiele zostało rannych w wyniku bombardowania szkoły w Kabulu w Afganistanie.
 Trzęsienie ziemi o magnitudzie 6,2 wystąpiło na wyspie Mindanao na Filipinach. Wstrząsy o sile 5,4 nawiedziły również o 8:16 czasu lokalnego prefektury Ibaraki i Fukushima oraz inne części Japonii. Trzęsienie powstało w śródlądowej części Fukushimy na głębokości około 93 km.
 W wieku 60 lat zmarł Jarosław Hyk, opozycjonista, działacz Solidarności Walczącej, przejechany w stanie wojennym przez ciężarówkę ZOMO.
 W wieku 119 lat zmarła Kane Tanaka, japońska superstulatka uznawana za najstarszą żyjącą zweryfikowaną osobę na świecie.
 Stany Zjednoczone stwierdziły, że zabronią testów rakiet antysatelitarnych.

18 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Wojska rosyjskie zdobyły miasto Kreminna w obwodzie ługańskim. Władze lokalne stwierdziły, że podczas próby ucieczki z miasta zastrzelono czterech uchodźców.
 Rosyjskie ministerstwo obrony podało, że zniszczono w ciągu nocy 16 ukraińskich obiektów wojskowych, w tym pięć stanowisk dowodzenia, skład paliwa i trzy magazyny amunicji. Rosja stwierdziła też, że zestrzeliła dwa ukraińskie MiG-29 i jeden Su-25.
 Igor Kastyukevich został de facto merem Chersonia, jedynej ukraińskiej stolicy obwodu zdobytej podczas rosyjskiej inwazji na Ukrainę.

17 kwietnia
 Ponad 70 bojowników Państwa Islamskiego – Afryka Zachodnia zginęło podczas nalotów Nigru i Nigerii na granicy obu krajów.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Sześć osób zginęło w wyniku rosyjskich ataków rakietowych na Lwów.
 Rosyjskie Siły Zbrojne postawiły ultimatum ostatnim pozostałym oddziałom ukraińskim i "zagranicznym bojownikom" wciąż utrzymującym się w hucie żelaza i stali Azowstal w Mariupolu do godziny 6:00 rano czasu moskiewskiego, aby złożyli broń i poddali się siłom rosyjskim. Obrońcy portu zignorowali ultimatum, a rosyjskie Ministerstwo Obrony zagroziło, że "wszyscy zostaną wyeliminowani".
 Według polskiej Straży Granicznej po raz pierwszy od rozpoczęcia inwazji na Ukrainę wjechało więcej Ukraińców niż ją opuściło.
 W regionie pacyficznego pierścienia ognia doszło tam do dwóch silnych trzęsień ziemi. W Vanuatu zjawisko miało magnitudę 5,8 i wystąpiło na głębokości 200 km, natomiast drugie w Indonezji miało magnitudę 5,6 i doszło do niego na głębokości 5 km.

16 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Rosyjskie Siły Powietrzne przeprowadziły naloty na Kijów.
 Rosyjskie uderzenia rakietowe uderzyły w Charków, zabijając jedną osobę. Z kolei w wyniku ataku rakietowego została zniszczona restauracja prowadzona przez World Central Kitchen.
 Podobno rosyjski oligarcha Roman Abramowicz odwiedził Kijów w celu wznowienia rozmów pokojowych między Rosją a Ukrainą.
 Chińscy astronauci Ye Guangfu, Wang Yaping i Zhai Zhigang ze statku kosmicznego Shenzhou 13 z powodzeniem wylądowali w Mongolii Wewnętrznej po spędzeniu 183 dni w kosmosie. Podczas lotu kosmicznego Wang Yaping została pierwszą Chinką, która odbyła spacer kosmiczny.

15 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 39 osób zginęło w kilku nalotach w Pakistanie na przygranicznych obszarach afgańskich prowincji Chost i Kunar, rzekomo wymierzonych w członków TTP.
 Co najmniej 35 osób zginęło, a 71 zostało rannych, gdy autobus przewożący wiernych na wielkanocne zgromadzenie rozbił się w Chipinge w Zimbabwe.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Rosja przeprowadziła ataki rakietowe na Kijów, twierdząc, że są one odwetem za ataki na Biełgorod i Briańsk w kwietniu 2022 roku.
 Rosja zablokowała Radio France Internationale i rosyjskie wydanie The Moscow Times.

14 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 42 osoby zginęły podczas ataków arabskich bojowników na spornym obszarze Abyei między Sudanem a Sudanem Południowym.
 Liczba ofiar śmiertelnych powodzi i osunięć ziemi spowodowanych przez burzę tropikalną Megi na Filipinach wzrosła do 115 osób.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Władze rosyjskie stwierdziły, że tymczasowo ewakuowały całą populację dwóch wiosek po tym, jak siły ukraińskie rzekomo ostrzelały rosyjską osadę Spodaryushino w obwodzie biełgorodzkim.
 Rosja podała, że dwa ukraińskie helikoptery "wykonały co najmniej sześć nalotów na budynki mieszkalne we wsi Klimowo" w obwodzie briańskim, raniąc siedem osób. Ukraina zaprzeczyła oskarżeniom, twierdząc, że Rosjanie sami ostrzelali wieś w ramach planu "rozpalenia antyukraińskiej histerii".
 Rosyjskie ministerstwo obrony potwierdziło, że flagowy okręt rosyjskiej marynarki wojennej krążownik rakietowy Moskwa zatonął na Morzu Czarnym po eksplozji i pożarze na pokładzie. Ukraina stwierdziła, że uderzyła w okręt dwiema rakietami przeciwokrętowymi Neptun.

13 kwietnia
 28 osób zginęło w wyniku wywrócenia się łodzi w stanie Sokoto w Nigerii.
 18 osób zginęło, gdy ciężarówka przewożąca 29 osób przewróciła się w prowincji Papua Zachodnia w Indonezji.
 10 osób zginęło, a 14 zostało rannych, gdy ciężarówka zderzyła się z autobusem turystycznym w Asuanie w Egipcie.
 Liczba ofiar śmiertelnych powodzi w KwaZulu-Natal w RPA w ciągu ostatnich pięciu dni wzrosła do 300 osób.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Gubernator obwodu charkowskiego Ołeh Synjehubow powiedział, że w ciągu ostatniej doby w obwodzie zginęło siedem osób, a 22 zostały ranne.
 Rosyjskie ministerstwo obrony stwierdziło, że około tysiąca ukraińskich marines poddało się Rosji w Mariupolu. Ukraina nie skomentowała tych doniesień.
 Ukraińskie wojsko poinformowało, że uderzyło krążownik rosyjskiej marynarki wojennej Moskwa dwoma pociskami przeciwokrętowymi Neptun.
 Stany Zjednoczone zadeklarowały, że wyślą na Ukrainę dodatkowe 800 mln dolarów pomocy wojskowej, a także broń ciężką, w tym systemy artyleryjskie, pociski artyleryjskie, transportery opancerzone, śmigłowce Mi-17 przeniesione z Afganistanu, 300 dronów Switchblade i bezzałogowe pojazdy naziemne do obrony wybrzeża. Z kolei wiceminister spraw zagranicznych Rosji Siergiej Riabkow ostrzegł, że Rosja będzie postrzegać pojazdy amerykańskie i NATO dostarczające broń na terytorium Ukrainy jako uzasadnione cele wojskowe. Dodał, że wszelkie próby Zachodu wyrządzenia znacznych szkód wojskowym Rosji lub jej separatystycznym sojusznikom na Ukrainie będą "surowo tłumione".
 Prezydenci Polski Andrzej Duda, Litwy Gitanas Nausėda, Łotwy Egils Levits i Estonii Alar Karis przyjechali do Kijowa na spotkanie z prezydentem Ukrainy Wołodymyrem Zełenskim.
 Trzęsienie ziemi o sile 6,3 nawiedziło wyspę Nowa Brytania w Papui-Nową Gwinei. Trzęsienie miało miejsce na głębokości 140 km. Nie odnotowano zniszczeń ani ofiar.

12 kwietnia
 Powodzie w Afryce Południowej, głównie w mieście Durban, zabiły co najmniej 250 osób, a wiele innych uznano za zaginione.
 Uzbrojeni pasterze Fulani zabili 23 osoby w stanie Benue w Nigerii.
 17 osób zostało rannych podczas masowej strzelaniny i ataku bombą dymną na stacji 36th Street w Brooklynie w Nowym Jorku w Stanach Zjednoczonych.

11 kwietnia
 Władze Nigerii stwierdziły, że w serii ataków w stanie Plateau zginęło 50 osób, a 70 zostało porwanych.
 Co najmniej 25 osób zginęło podczas powodzi i osuwisk spowodowanych przez burzę tropikalną Megi na Filipinach.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Prezydent Ukrainy Wołodymyr Zełenski ogłosił, że miasto Mariupol zostało "całkowicie zniszczone", uważając, że liczba ofiar śmiertelnych wyniosła "dziesiątki tysięcy".
 Gubernator obwodu donieckiego Pawło Kyrylenko stwierdził, że w wyniku ataków rakietowych w regionie zginęły trzy osoby, a osiem zostało rannych.

10 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 W pobliżu wsi Buzowa w obwodzie kijowskim odkryto masowy grób ukraińskich cywilów. Prokurator generalny Ukrainy Iryna Venediktova stwierdziła, że w obwodzie kijowskim odkryto dotychczas 1222 ciała.
 Dwie osoby zginęły, a kilka zostało rannych w wyniku rosyjskiego ostrzału w mieście Dergacze w obwodzie charkowskim.
 Międzynarodowy port lotniczy Dniepr został całkowicie zniszczony przez rosyjskie ataki rakietowe. Pięć osób zostało rannych.
 Podczas masowej strzelaniny w wioskach Tangi i Bir Dagig w Zachodnim Darfurze w Sudanie zginęło 12 osób, a 10 zostało rannych.
 Pierwsza tura wyborów prezydenckich we Francji nie przyniosła rozstrzygnięcia. Urzędujący prezydent Emmanuel Macron wygrał pierwszą turę z 28,1% głosów i zmierzy się z Marine Le Pen (23,3% głosów), w drugiej turze zaplanowanej na 24 kwietnia.

9 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Cztery osoby w Wuhłedarze i jedna osoba w Nowomychajłówce w rejonie Marinka giną w wyniku ostrzału rosyjskiego. Dwie osoby zostały ranne.
 Ukraińska minister ds. reintegracji terytoriów czasowo okupowanych Iryna Wereszczuk poinformowała, że prezydent Zełenski zarządził trzecią wymianę więźniów z Rosją, w ramach której na Ukrainę wróciło 12 żołnierzy i 14 cywilów.
 Trzęsienie ziemi o magnitudzie 5,2 nawiedziło miasto Pütürge w prowincji Malatya we wschodniej Turcji. Wstrząs został zarejestrowany na głębokości 6,7 km. Nie odnotowano żadnych ofiar ani poważnych szkód.
 S&P Global Ratings obniżył rating rosyjskich zobowiązań zagranicznych do "SD" (selektywna niewypłacalność), ponieważ rosyjski rząd zdecydował się użyć rubli do spłaty swoich obligatariuszy zamiast używać dolarów, jak przewidziano. S&P spodziewa się jednak, że Rosja nadal będzie wywiązywać się ze swoich pozostałych zobowiązań płatniczych.

8 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 57 osób zginęło, a ok. 110 zostało rannych w ataku rakietowym na dworzec kolejowy w Kramatorsku.
 Co najmniej 12 żołnierzy i czterech bojowników paramilitarnych zginęło, a 21 zostało rannych podczas ataku na bazę wojskową w Namissiguimie w Burkina Faso.

7 kwietnia
 Co najmniej 11 osób zginęło, a kilkanaście zostało rannych w osuwisku w gminie Abriaquí w Kolumbii.
 Osiem osób zginęło, a trzy zostały ranne w wyniku eksplozji w barze w obozie wojskowym w Goma, Kiwu Północne, Demokratyczna Republika Konga. Przyczyny wybuchu nie były nieznane.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Gubernator obwodu ługańskiego Serhij Haidai poinformował, że wszystkie szpitale w obwodzie zostały doszczętnie zniszczone przez siły rosyjskie. Rosja zaprzecza temu twierdzeniu, oskarżając Ukrainę o niszczenie własnych szpitali. Z kolei mer Borys Fiłatow stwierdził, aby wszystkie kobiety, dzieci i osoby starsze opuściły Dniepr w ramach przygotowań do ewentualnego rosyjskiego ataku.
 Izba Reprezentantów Stanów Zjednoczonych zagłosował 420–3 za przyjęciem przepisów zawieszających normalne stosunki handlowe z Rosją i Białorusią po inwazji na Ukrainę. Następnie Senat zagłosował 100–0 za przyjęciem ustawy, wysyłając ją do zatwierdzenia prezydentowi Joe Bidenowi.
 Według artykułu opublikowanego w Science, w organizmach oceanicznych znaleziono ponad 5000 nowych gatunków wcześniej nieodkrytych wirusów RNA i zaproponowano pogrupowanie ich w pięć nowych typów.
 HD1, najdalsza znana galaktyka, została odkryta 13,5 miliarda lat świetlnych od Ziemi.

6 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Siły rosyjskie ostrzeliwały Siewierodonieck w obwodzie ługańskim, podpalając dziesięć wieżowców.
 Według doniesień, dwóch cywilów zostało zabitych przez rosyjskie wojsko w Wuhłedarze w obwodzie donieckim. Według ukraińskich władz rannych zostało pięć osób.
 Rosja stwierdziła, że zakończy swoją inwazję, jeśli prezydent Ukrainy Wołodymyr Zełenski zgodzi się na warunki ustalone w trakcie negocjacji, a konkretnie na prawną gwarancję, że Ukraina nie przystąpi do NATO poprzez zmianę ukraińskiej konstytucji na taki zapis. Rosja podała również, że zawiesiła operacje w Kijowie jako "gest dobrej woli" w celu promowania rozmów pokojowych.

5 kwietnia
 Human Rights Watch stwierdziło, że malijskie wojsko i najemnicy z Grupy Wagnera zmasakrowali ponad 300 cywilów w mieście Mourrah podczas dziewięciodniowej operacji przeciw rebeliantom w marcu tegoż roku.
 Co najmniej 15 osób zginęło, a kilkanaście zostało rannych w ataku na bazę wojskową w Birnin Gwari w stanie Kaduna w Nigerii.
 Pięć osób zginęło, a 10 zostało rannych, gdy pociąg zderzył się z furgonetką w Mindszent na Węgrzech.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Statek pod banderą Dominiki zacumowany w porcie w Mariupolu został trafiony przez artylerię rosyjskiej marynarki wojennej. Jedna osoba została ranna, jednak wszyscy członkowie załogi zostali ewakuowani.
 Dania, Estonia, Włochy, Portugalia, Rumunia, Słowenia, Hiszpania i Szwecja wydalili ze swoich krajów ponad 100 rosyjskich pracowników dyplomatycznych. Łotwa zamknęła rosyjskie konsulaty w Dyneburgu i Lipawie, a Estonia zamknęła rosyjskie placówki dyplomatyczne w Narwie i Tartu. Działania te były reakcją na ujawnioną niedawno masakrę w Buczy.

4 kwietnia
 Pociąg wykoleił się w prowincji Lualaba w Demokratycznej Republice Konga, zabijając siedem osób i raniąc 14.
 Pandemia COVID-19: Według stanu na 4 kwietnia liczba potwierdzonych zakażeń na całym świecie przekroczyła 492 miliony, zaś liczba zgonów to ok. 6,2 miliona osób.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Prezydent Ukrainy Wołodymyr Zełenski zapowiedział, że rozmowy pokojowe będą kontynuowane pomimo masakry w Buczy.
 Astronomowie ogłosili odkrycie K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb, egzoplanety podobno przypominającej Jowisza. Odkrycia dokonano za pomocą wycofanego Teleskopu Kosmicznego Keplera.

3 kwietnia
 21 osób zginęło podczas ataku ADF na wioskę Masambo w Demokratycznej Republice Konga.
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 W Odessie odnotowano duże eksplozje, w wyniku czego mieszkańcy szukali miejsce do schronienia. Ukraińscy urzędnicy stwierdzili, że rosyjskie siły powietrzne wystrzeliły na miasto pociski, a część z nich została przechwycona.
 Rzeź w Buczy: Human Rights Watch, niezależna grupa zajmująca się prawami człowieka, stwierdziła, że udokumentowała zarzuty dotyczące zbrodni wojennych popełnionych przez siły rosyjskie na Ukrainie przeciwko cywilom, w tym gwałty, doraźne egzekucje i grabież mienia cywilnego. Z kolei przywódcy Stanów Zjednoczonych, Unii Europejskiej i NATO zareagowali na pojawiające się doniesienia o masakrze w Buczy, oskarżając rosyjskie siły zbrojne o zbrodnie wojenne i wzywając do zaostrzenia sankcji wobec Rosji.
 Na Węgrzech odbyły się wybory parlamentarne, które wygrała partia Fidesz obecnego premiera Viktora Orbána, zdobywając większość mandatów i zachowując większość w parlamencie.
 W wyborach w Serbii prezydent Aleksandar Vučić został ponownie wybrany, zdobywając 60% głosów, a jego partia Serbska Partia Postępowa zdobyła najwięcej głosów w wyborach do Zgromadzenia Narodowego (42,9%), choć nie zdobyła ogólnej większości mandatów.

2 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Rzeź w Buczy: Po odbiciu miasta przez siły ukraińskie na ulicach Buczy znaleziono setki martwych cywilów. Dziennikarze i siły ukraińskie stwierdziły, że mają dowody zbrodni wojennych popełnionych przez wojsko rosyjskie.
 Ukraina odzyskała pełną kontrolę nad obwodem kijowskim, gdy ostatnie wojska rosyjskie wróciły na Białoruś.
 Mieszkańcy stwierdzili, że Rosjanie brutalnie rozpędzili proukraińską demonstrację w Enerhodarze. Kilku protestujących zostało aresztowanych. Przypuszcza się, że wojska rosyjskie użyły również eksplozji w celu rozproszenia tłumu.
 Australia i Indie podpisały umowę handlową o wartości 12,6 miliarda dolarów australijskich, mającą na celu wzmocnienie indyjskiego sektora produkcyjnego poprzez umożliwienie dostępu do większej ilości surowców, a także zmniejszenie zależności Australii od Chin po tym, jak Chiny nałożyły sankcje na niektóre australijskie towary po kilku sporach politycznych.

1 kwietnia
 Inwazja Rosji na Ukrainę:
 Siły ukraińskie odbiły miasto Bucza w obwodzie kijowskim w wyniku wycofania się wojsk rosyjskich. Siły ukraińskie odbiły również miasto Irpień po wypędzeniu ostatnich wojsk rosyjskich. Burmistrz Ołeksandr Markuszyn potwierdził, że miasto zostało w pełni wyzwolone.
 Rosja stwierdziła, że ukraińskie siły powietrzne przeprowadziły nalot na Biełgorod, uderzając w kilka obiektów paliwowych. Filmy w mediach społecznościowych pokazywały nisko lecące helikoptery szturmowe strzelające rakietami do składu paliwa.
 Wojna domowa w Mali: Według Mali zabito 203 bojowników dziewięciodniowej operacji wojskowej trwającej od 23 marca do 1 kwietnia tegoż roku.
 Osiem osób zginęło, a 20 zostało rannych podczas zawalenia się kopalni węgla w Aleksinac w Serbii.
 Po spotkaniu z rdzennymi delegatami z Kanady papież Franciszek przeprosił za "godne ubolewania zachowanie" członków Kościoła katolickiego za działania w prowadzonym przez kościół systemie szkół rezydencyjnych.
 Przypisy

04
Wydarzenia 2022


text:
Saturday, Nov. 10 at 3:30pm
In 1941, marksmen from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, following a directive from the Ministry of Public Security, shot dead 23 animals at Belfast Zoo. During these turbulent times, a woman secretly walked a young elephant from the zoo each evening to the backyard of her terraced home. There, she cared for and comforted it as the Luftwaffe bombs rained down over Belfast. That true story is the inspiration for "Zoo." Seen through the eyes of 10-year-old Tom (Art Parkinson), aided and abetted by his misfit friends, this moving adventure unfolds as Tom takes on the fight to save Buster the elephant. The film co-stars Toby Jones ("The Hunger Games") and Penelope Wilton ("Downton Abbey") as Tom's adult allies. The LA Times writes: "It all plays out more convincingly than it may sound, with (director Colin) McIvor layering in depth, dimension and grace. Period re-creation is also first rate and, for animal fans, there's eye candy aplenty in the form of giraffes, lions, chimps, flamingos and, of course, one soulful elephant."
Ireland U.K.
International Spotlight SLIFF/Kids Family Films
War Youth
Family Film Historical Drama

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: C++ Exception Handling causing terminate We are facing a problem in c++ code.When an exception is thrown the
   process is getting terminated,but my code has proper exception
   handling.
   Core stack is below.
   ======================
   #0  0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
   #1  0x00489915 in raise () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
   #2  0x0048b379 in abort () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
   #3  0xf6a1fbdb in __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
   #4  0xf6a1d8f1 in __cxa_call_unexpected () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
   #5  0xf6a1d926 in std::terminate () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
   #6  0xf6a1da6f in __cxa_throw () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6

Some of the forums showing that this might occur when there is a stack unwinding or exception raised when handling other exception.
Can you please suggest here to fix the problem.

A: Are you throwing an exception in any of your object destructors? A call to terminate generally happens in *nix systems when a new exception is thrown before the current exception is caught.
When an exception gets thrown the objects in your stack frame get destroyed as the stack unwinds. If any of these objects were to throw an exception during destruction, it confuses the exception handling mechanism as it has now two exceptions to catch, the original exception and the new one which gets thrown during the destruction of the object on the stack. So it issues a terminate and aborts.

A: Terminate can be called if:

*

*An exception is thrown while another exception is propagating

*An exception is thrown that violates an exception specification

*An exception is thrown and never caught

But your call stack also has unexpected =>__cxa_call_unexpected ()
To me this is an indication that an exception specification has been violated.
This calls unexpected() which by default calls terminate().

A: Can also be caused if/when cannot allocate memory for a dependent exception object which would be thrown. (I imagine this is rare. But is possible reason the app would terminate abnormally.)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Ever wondered what magic an item that you use daily can do for something that you never though of? Here let's explore 10 uses for toothpaste that you never knew aboutbut not available at your fingertip.
#1 – Did a drink stain your wooden table? Ladies you will like it, just clean it with toothpaste and you are done!
#2 – Is your clothing iron dirty – just wipe with a wet cloth and toothpaste on it – see the magic!
#3 – Do you see those hard water stain on the wine glass? Want it sparkle again – just use the toothpaste to clean it!
#4 – Do you have small scratches on that screen or watches? Just use a microfiber cloth and cleanse with toothpaste, see the scratches disappear!
#5 – Do you have those nasty yellow stain in bath tub? Your toothpaste could come handy to get rid of them!
#6 – Do you have cracked nails? Try putting a bit of toothpaste on it and the results will astound you!
#7 – Got bad stains on the rug? Rub them out with some toothpaste and brush and see the difference!
#8 – Did you kids draw on the walls? Try cleaning with some toothpaste and see the difference!
#9 – Did you have small burn? Apply toothpaste to get immediate soothing effect, this is not a treatment but may help ease the pain.
#10 – Do you have those old DVD or CD that you like to use but it is all scratched? Try to rub some toothpaste on it and wipe it clean and see the magic work!


Published: Jan 21 at 9:35 p.m.
A teenage girl was arrested Friday after she allegedly made threats toward Corner Brook Regional High.
According to a spokesperson with the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District, the school was placed in a secure school mode just before 12:30 p.m. when it was determined the girl was in the midst of a personal crisis and required external intervention.
The youth was retained in the administration area while officials waited for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary to arrive. When they did, the girl was removed from the building.
The school board said the high school was in secure school mode for 10 minutes. It was done so to limit movement inside the building and to make sure students were safe.
The school district release does not say if the female was a student at the school or not.
The RNC confirmed the girl was arrested, although Const. Shawna Park would not provide any further details on the incident, including the name of the school, nature of the threat, the youth's age or if she was a student at the school.
According to the school board, the individual has been charged with two counts of uttering threats against the school.
The incident remains under investigation by the RNC.


text:
The Arrows to Aerospace parade is one of Bellevue's signature events.
Photo by Brody Hilgenkamp
Bellevue embarks on rebranding initiative
By Brody Hilgenkamp Staff Writer
Brody Hilgenkamp
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "Bellevue?"
There are many potential answers to that question, and city officials, business leaders and other entities in the Bellevue community are hoping to create a unified identity from those answers.
A committee of those leaders, based out of the Greater Bellevue Area Chamber of Commerce, has solicited proposals for marketing and consulting firms to conduct research about the community and develop a cohesive brand Bellevue's businesses, school districts and city can then use to promote themselves.
Duane Safarik, a real estate broker who helped form the committee and a former president and CEO of the chamber, said the initiative began based on feedback from the business community and Mayor Rusty Hike's campaign to spur economic development and connectivity.
Safarik said they saw an opportunity.
"Everybody has different ideas on why Bellevue is good, so let's put it all in one basket and then market from there," Safarik said.
According to those involved in the committee, there is a perception that Bellevue lacks a unified identity, or has a narrow identity based on being a military community that revolves around Offutt Air Force Base or the first settlement in Nebraska's history.
While those are true and embraced, Bellevue has grown through development and annexation to more than 60,000 people, and leaders believe Bellevue's true identity should include more than that.
Distinct areas of the city have formed, Fontenelle Forest is a hidden gem, access to downtown Omaha's work and entertainment sectors are less than 15 minutes away and the city's restaurants are a metro-wide draw.
That growth has been disjointed at times, leaders said, and no common thread about what Bellevue is has developed.
"When you're sitting out in west Omaha and you say, 'Let's go to Bellevue,' where is Bellevue? Is it (Olde Towne), is it Twin Creek? There's no identity there," Hike said.
Kevin Hensel, the current president and CEO of the Bellevue chamber, said those on the committee were careful not to "predispose themselves" to any perceived identities, but rather focused on questions they hoped the consulting or marketing firm will answer.
"What we as individuals may think, or even as a collective of the committee may think, we may still be completely off base as to what the community thinks we are," Hensel said.
The firm will be chosen in February and the contract, paid for by the city, will begin in March.
A second phase to implement the brand, which leaders said would begin early in 2020 and continue into early 2021, would be funded through private donors.
Once the brand is fully developed and implemented, which could take up to two years, that brand will be used to market Bellevue to the community itself, the Omaha metro area and nationally to developers and businesses that could invest in Bellevue.
"We need to be able to tell that story, but we need to tell that story accurately, that our own community is able to tell that same story," Hensel said.
Community meetings based on voting wards will be organized during the next year to allow residents to give their input, leaders said.
"Northwest, they can't be left out. Olde Towne can't be left out, and we all need to work together because everybody is in it for the same reason but I don't think anybody knows what that reason is," Safarik said.
Leaders pointed to cities like La Vista and Council Bluffs that have undergone identity makeovers through economic development and branding.
Duane Safarik
Kevin Hensel
Got a News Tip? Email: brody.hilgenkamp@bellevueleader.com Phone: 402-537-4848
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Where Sarpy County, cities stand on refugee resettlement


text:
The trouble with the conservation's cutest mascot. On a chilly spring day in 1966, zookeepers in London loaded a giant panda named Chi-Chi onto a commercial plane. The aircraft was bound for Russia. Chi-Chi was bound, you might say, for love. She would soon arrive at the Moscow Zoo to meet a slightly younger male named An-An, the only other captive giant panda living outside of China at the time. The goal was to get the two bears to breed. To prepare for Chi-Chi's departure, British European Airways removed about 30 seats in the front of the plane. The panda was carried aboard in a crate and separated from 37 passengers by a screen. Flight attendants sprayed deodorant to try and vanquish the scent of the 235-pound bear. For lunch, the attendants served passengers a side of bamboo hearts in Chi-Chi's honor. Terry Fincher/Express/Getty Images Chi-Chi leaves London for Moscow on March 11, 1966. The media breathlessly covered the long-distance love affair. Yet it was doomed from the start. When the bears first met in Moscow, An-An attacked Chi-Chi and zookeepers had to separate them with brooms, one newspaper reported. The pandas stayed in separate cages that summer. In the fall, keepers arranged another meeting, but this time, Chi-Chi "slapped" An-An in the face. Soon after, Chi-Chi returned to London, prompting headlines like "From Russia ... Without Love." Although attempts to breed Chi-Chi and An-An failed, they marked the start of a massive, global campaign to breed pandas in captivity. It was fueled by a sense of urgency: The giant panda population was dwindling. In southwestern China, the only place on Earth where the animals live, human development was destroying forests, and pandas were being plucked from their land and placed in zoos. In the 1980s, only about 1,100 bears remained, down from a historical population that scientists believe once numbered in the tens of thousands. As pandas started vanishing from the wild, they grew into powerful symbols of the movement to conserve the natural world. As the plight of wildlife was making headlines, pandas — clumsy, big-eyed bears that look like plush toys come to life — emerged as the perfect mascot to rally support. The World Wildlife Fund, an influential environmental organization, helped formalize the animals as icons when it chose the panda as its logo in 1961. Chi-Chi, An-An's wouldn't-be mate, was the inspiration for the design. (WWF, now known internationally as the World Wide Fund for Nature, chose the panda, in part, because black-and-white logos were cheaper to print.) As pandas shot to stardom, China, the US, and zoos around the world fueled the captive breeding campaign with tens of millions of dollars in veterinary research. China also created dozens of forest reserves to protect the bears. In 2018, the country announced plans to combine many of them into a single habitat three times larger than Yellowstone National Park. VCG via Getty Images Giant panda cubs rest in a tree at the Shenshuping Panda Base in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China in April 2022. These efforts have unquestionably paid off for pandas. Scientists learned from Chi-Chi and An-An's platonic exchange and, in time, they nearly perfected the difficult art of panda breeding and husbandry. That's the only reason you can see them in zoos today. The bears are also recovering in the wild. The most recent estimates indicate that more than 1,800 pandas now live in southwestern China, and their numbers are increasing. That trend prompted the country to announce, in 2021, that pandas are no longer endangered. (The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the global authority on endangered animals, delisted pandas in 2016.) Imagine that: The panda, the very symbol of endangered species, is no longer endangered. But if giant pandas are mascots for endangered species, then their team is, so to speak, losing. In the time that environmental advocates were saving pandas, much of the rest of the planet's wildlife continued to deteriorate. The world now faces an unprecedented and accelerating crisis of biodiversity loss, with more than 1 million species at risk of extinction. Forests are quieter. The oceans are emptier. The story of the panda is, in a sense, a story of success. Tales of rebounding animal populations are rare. But it carries with it a warning: The model of conservation that lifted up pandas won't work to save everything else. The global effort to save giant pandas is rooted in our collective obsession with these bears. It dates back to at least the 1930s, when a New York City socialite journeyed East. The only pandas on American soil back then were stuffed bears in natural history museums. But in 1936, a dress designer in NYC named Ruth Harkness traveled to China in search of a live cub. She was trying to finish what her late husband, William Harkness Jr., had started: Months earlier, the young explorer died from cancer on an expedition to capture a panda and bring it back to the US. One November morning, Mrs. Harkness and her local guide heard squealing by the stump of a large spruce tree in the mountains outside of Chengdu, Henry Nicholls recounts in The Way of the Panda. There, she found a baby panda no larger than a kitten. The cub was perhaps less than two weeks old. "I stood for minutes in a trance," Harkness, known for her deep voice and bright red lipstick, told a reporter in 1937. "I had discovered a most precious thing — a tiny offspring of one of Mother Nature's greatest and rarest mysteries in the animal kingdom." She named the cub Su-Lin and took him back to New York City on a steamship. He was an instant hit. "Wherever she goes, Mrs. Harkness lugs her 10-pound jewel along in a traveling basket," the Daily News wrote at the time. "The infant panda has viewed the interior of some of New York's best restaurants since its arrival." Bettmann Archive Ruth Harkness holds Su-Lin in her room at the Hotel Biltmore in New York City in 1936, shortly after returning from China. What makes animals like the panda so popular? Maybe it's their looks, their striking appearance, cute and fearsome all at once. Pandas also exploit our parenting instincts. Cubs have round faces with big cheeks, and they tumble about like helpless toddlers. (We also tend to like what we can relate to. Fellow mammals with arms? Sure. Freshwater mussels? Not so much.) Harkness eventually brought Su-Lin to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, where the cub — the first live panda in the US — drew a record 53,000 visitors on the first day he was displayed. It was China, however, that turned the bears into a global sensation. In the 1970s, the Chinese government began sending wild-caught pandas around the world as state gifts — a sign of goodwill and friendship, historian Elena Songster wrote in her 2018 book, Panda Nation. There was even a term for it: Panda diplomacy. "Giant pandas served the Chinese government as invaluable tools for putting a friendly face on China," Songster wrote. "These fuzzy creatures thawed Cold War tensions and promoted the idea that warmer relations with the inscrutable Communist power could be possible." Most famously, China gave two pandas to President Richard Nixon in 1972 after a series of successful peace talks. The bears, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, flew to DC on Air Force One and were taken to the National Zoo "under security measures as tight as if they had been Chairman Mao," the New York Times reported. (In exchange, the US sent China Matilda and Milton, a pair of musk oxen with some kind of skin condition.) American pandas were as famous as any celebrity. Two decades after Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling arrived, China sent the US two more bears, Shi Shi and Bai Yun, this time to the San Diego Zoo. News helicopters filmed their high-security motorcade as if they were heads of state. "Make no mistake: That phenomenon that zookeepers call 'pandamania' is back," the LA Times wrote in 1996. "No animal in the history of US zoos brings the crowds and the awe-struck response of pandas." Irving Haberman/IH Images/Getty Images Photographers get close-up photographs of a giant panda eating bamboo shoots and leaves at the Bronx Zoo in New York circa 1947. Pandamania was good for zoos and for China. It wasn't necessarily good for wild pandas. In the 1980s, China stopped giving away pandas as state gifts but began loaning them out for a few months at a time, often at the expense of the wild population. George Schaller, then director of science at a large environmental organization called the Wildlife Conservation Society, criticized these short-term loans as "rent-a-panda" programs. "I have a nightmare vision of evermore pandas being drained from the wild until the species exists only in captivity," he wrote in his 1993 book The Last Panda. In those years, pandas were facing other pressures in their homeland. Mines and human developments in Sichuan Province were replacing forests. Meanwhile, pandas were running out of food — stirring up fears that the world's most beloved animal might soon go extinct. Pandas, like humans, are technically omnivores. About 6,000 years ago, however, they stopped consuming meat, for the most part. Today, pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo. While bamboo grows abundantly in China, it has a few critical shortcomings. Like celery, it doesn't have many calories, so pandas have to spend half of the day eating. Plus, they can't put on enough fat to hibernate in the winter like other bears. Bamboo is also a somewhat unreliable food source. Every so often, at seemingly random intervals, entire hillsides of bamboo stalks flower, produce seeds, and die. Normally, only one or a few bamboo species might flower at the same time, so pandas can just forage for other varieties if they need to. But in the '70s, multiple species died all at once, according to Songster, causing the bears to starve. By some estimates, more than 100 died. Then in the '80s, bamboo forests flowered and died once again, fueling concerns that pandas were at risk of extinction (not to mention reports that pandas were looting food from peoples' homes). Although it's not clear whether the second bamboo die-off actually harmed many pandas, it helped ignite the global campaign to save these animals — at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. China and groups such as WWF relied on two main approaches. One was to establish a system of protected areas that prohibited hunting, logging, and other harmful human activities, as China has done. Another was to build out a massive breeding operation, the likes of which the world had never seen. Kin Cheung/AP One-month-old panda triplets rest as they receive a body check at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, China, in August 2014. He Haiyang/Sichuan Daily/VCG via Getty Images A giant panda cub is seen at the Shenshuping Panda Base in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China in July 2021. Liu Jin/AFP via Getty Images Breeders play with panda cubs at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong, China, in February 2007. Breeding animals in captivity can theoretically help refresh a dwindling wild animal population. It also helps restock zoos. Without breeding pandas or taking them from the wild, zoos would eventually run out of their biggest attractions. That's a problem, not only for zoos but for conservation, said William McShea, a scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. "If you're going to sell people on giant pandas, you need to show people a giant panda," he said. (Pandas are "great showmen," McShea added. "Giant pandas will sit there and essentially do tricks for you all day long.") Breeding pandas, however, is a challenge. Female pandas ovulate just once a year for one to three days. In the wild, males will congregate along ridge tops in the spring and "a stream of visiting females in heat keeps the mating activity intense," McShea has written. In captivity, however, vets have to introduce a pair of pandas at just the right time. Even then, the bears may prefer to swat at each other rather than have sex. "There was nothing easy about any of it," said David Kersey, an associate professor of physiology at Western University who helped develop the National Zoo's captive breeding program. In several instances, zoos have tried using videos of pandas copulating, a.k.a. panda porn, to get the bears in the mood. This is not a joke. At one of the most famous breeding facilities in China, scientists showed a video of pandas mating to a five-year-old female bear named Ke Lin because she kept rejecting her mate, Yongyong. "We played them the film and she took great interest in it," a spokesman at the Chengdu facility told the Independent. "After that, there was no stopping her and they mated successfully." Zookeepers have also tried giving pandas viagra and working them out. In 2011, keepers at the National Zoo ran Tian Tian, a popular male panda, through a sort of sex training program designed to strengthen his legs. "We're building up his stamina," Brandie Smith, a senior curator at the zoo, told the Washington Post. "I think Tian is in pretty good shape, but ... we're turning him into an Olympic athlete." The early years of panda breeding were full of disasters. In one case, a male panda in Japan reportedly died during a routine electro-ejaculation procedure — which involves a veterinarian sending a small shock to the animal's prostate to get him to produce semen. Zookeepers also had a hard time figuring out if a bear was pregnant until right before she gave birth. Infants are tiny, weighing just 3 to 5 ounces. During ultrasounds, zookeepers would occasionally confuse feces for a fetus. It was a mess. Yet little by little, the science improved. Vets figured out how to tell exactly when a female is ovulating and in heat. They also learned which males make the perfect genetic match. "We've seen the success rate of breeding just skyrocket," Kersey said. Scientists also learned how to keep more babies alive. In the '90s, the survival rate of captive cubs in China was about 10 percent, according to Qiongyu Huang, a wildlife biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Today, it's almost 90 percent, he said. There are now around 600 pandas in captivity. "Veterinary science has done an outstanding job," said Marc Brody, president of the NGO Panda Mountain, who's worked on panda conservation for more than two decades. Pandas are a threatened species, still just one step away from the classification of endangered. But along with China's growing efforts to protect a massive area of forested land, captive breeding has, for now, managed to avert their extinction. "The turnaround in China has just been remarkable," McShea said. Pandas are one of several iconic creatures that have for decades drawn the bulk of conservation support and public attention. Tigers, mountain gorillas, wolves, and elephants are other examples. Pouring resources into a handful of popular animals was the dominant approach to conservation in the late 20th century, said Jason Gilchrist, an ecologist at Edinburgh Napier University. The idea was to use those flashy species to draw in funding that could trickle down to other animals — in other words, pandas could be tools for conservation, not just diplomacy. Plus, protecting land for one kind of animal can shield a whole host of others. This approach, known as single-species conservation, has worked to some degree, especially for nature's A-listers. Since 2008, for example, India has doubled its wild population of tigers. The number of mountain gorillas in Central Africa is up, too, as is the US population of gray wolves and bald eagles. Recent research also shows that past conservation efforts have, at least temporarily, helped prevent a number of bird and mammal species from going extinct. Still, it's hard to see this species-focused model as a success, some scientists say, if the ultimate goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity and the countless benefits it provides. On this endeavor, the world has failed. Praveeni Chamathka for Vox Since 1970, as the campaign to save pandas was ramping up, populations of most major animal groups including birds, mammals, and fish have declined by an average of 69 percent. Species without popular appeal are often worse off. One-fifth of reptiles such as crocodiles and turtles are now threatened with extinction. Mussels are in peril, as are corals — two animals that provide essential services for us and other creatures. (The latter, for example, provide shelter for fish and safeguard coastal communities from flooding. Popularity isn't always a sign of ecological importance.) Furthermore, parks designed to protect charismatic species don't always safeguard other animals. A 2020 study in the journal Nature, for example, found that four species of large carnivores (the leopard, snow leopard, wolf, and an Asian dog called a dhole) have declined across panda habitat since the mid-20th century. Another study, published in 2021, found that populations of several species that overlap with giant pandas, including the Asiatic black bear, Chinese serow, and forest musk deer, have all plummeted, as well. (Panda preserves may have slowed these species' declines.) "Panda conservation doesn't appear to be benefiting other species, or the wider ecosystem," Gilchrist wrote about the 2020 study. "These findings shake the foundations of one of conservation's most enduring ideas — that investing time and money into protecting particular large, influential species can pay dividends for the other species and habitats they coexist with." Put another way, "you're essentially sleepwalking into losing biodiversity by focusing resources on specific species," Gilchrist told Vox. Breeding animals in captivity — now a widespread practice among zoos — also has questionable benefits for wild populations, according to some researchers. "Captive breeding is not a conservation strategy," said Jillian Ryan, a researcher who wrote her dissertation at the University of South Australia on panda conservation. Xinhua/Xue Yubin via Getty Images Giant panda Hua Yan, from the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, is released into the wild at Liziping Nature Reserve in Ya'an, China, in October 2016. Zoos "carefully breed their animals as if they might be called upon at any moment to release them, like Noah throwing open the doors to the ark," Emma Marris wrote in the 2021 book Wild Souls: Freedom and flourishing in the non-human world. "But that day of release never quite seems to come." Zoos rarely reintroduce animals to the wild because they don't often survive, Ryan said. A dozen or so captive pandas have been released in China so far, and at least a few of them have died. The first panda scientists ever released, named Xiang Xiang (or "Lucky"), died in 2007, less than a year after his return to the wild. He likely fell out of a tree following a fight with wild-born pandas, according to multiple news reports. "Any reintroduction program has an inherent challenge: You're increasing the potential for the animal to die," said Jake Owens, director of conservation at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens. "The nice thing about zoos is that they do provide really high care." Owens and some other researchers argue that captive breeding can be an essential tool to avert extinction. It's helped species like the endangered California condor recover, he says. Zoos and breeding facilities also help people fall in love with pandas, he said, which has put pressure on China to conserve their habitat. But using zoo animals as inspiration for conservation has its limits, Marris argues. "There's no unambiguous evidence that zoos are making visitors care more about conservation or take any action to support it," she writes. People go to the zoo, she added, to be entertained. Some scholars also argue that campaigns to save charismatic animals have distorted the human relationship with nature. Pandas, and most other highly charismatic species, are only visible in zoos or protected areas far from cities, reinforcing the idea that nature is something to look at, something apart from ourselves. Yet we all exist within ecosystems and depend on the services they provide, from water purification to crop pollination. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images Visitors take photographs of giant panda cub Xiang Xiang at Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo, Japan, in February 2018. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images Seven-month-old panda cub Xiang Xiang rests on a tree stump as adoring fans photograph her. Indeed, most of the world's remaining biodiversity exists alongside humanity — all 8 billion of us. To conserve wildlife, people will need to steward the plants and animals in their own backyards, in cities, in places they consider their home, said David Jachowski, a professor of wildlife ecology at Clemson University. The environmental movement is changing. In recent decades, large environmental groups have adopted a more ecosystem-scale approach to their work. In a previous interview with Vox, Marco Lambertini, then the head of WWF International, said that using pandas and tigers to inspire the public to care about wildlife was incredibly effective. That approach helped WWF grow into the world's largest environmental organization. But he acknowledged that the nonprofit could have done a better job at "connecting the dots," linking wildlife to ecosystems and all the benefits they provide for people. (WWF told Vox that ecosystem-based approaches have always been core to the organization's strategy.) Perhaps, then, it doesn't make sense to have a single species as the mascot for conservation. If there were one animal to represent the movement to conserve the natural world, the panda is probably the wrong one. It could be the weasel, Jachowski says; they're predators that help sustain the food chain. Other researchers have argued that even earthworms would be better candidates. Worms and weasels might not have the appeal of pandas. But they're linchpins in a complex web of life that's unraveling before our eyes. To sustain these and so many other underrated animals — the moths and flies, the bats and shrews — is to sustain the world's ecosystems. It is to sustain ourselves. Benji Jones is a senior environmental reporter at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher.
The trouble with the conservation's cutest mascot.
On a chilly spring day in 1966, zookeepers in London loaded a giant panda named Chi-Chi onto a commercial plane. The aircraft was bound for Russia. Chi-Chi was bound, you might say, for love. She would soon arrive at the Moscow Zoo to meet a slightly younger male named An-An, the only other captive giant panda living outside of China at the time. The goal was to get the two bears to breed.
To prepare for Chi-Chi's departure, British European Airways removed about 30 seats in the front of the plane. The panda was carried aboard in a crate and separated from 37 passengers by a screen. Flight attendants sprayed deodorant to try and vanquish the scent of the 235-pound bear. For lunch, the attendants served passengers a side of bamboo hearts in Chi-Chi's honor.
Terry Fincher/Express/Getty Images
Chi-Chi leaves London for Moscow on March 11, 1966.
The media breathlessly covered the long-distance love affair. Yet it was doomed from the start. When the bears first met in Moscow, An-An attacked Chi-Chi and zookeepers had to separate them with brooms, one newspaper reported. The pandas stayed in separate cages that summer. In the fall, keepers arranged another meeting, but this time, Chi-Chi "slapped" An-An in the face. Soon after, Chi-Chi returned to London, prompting headlines like "From Russia ... Without Love."
Although attempts to breed Chi-Chi and An-An failed, they marked the start of a massive, global campaign to breed pandas in captivity. It was fueled by a sense of urgency: The giant panda population was dwindling. In southwestern China, the only place on Earth where the animals live, human development was destroying forests, and pandas were being plucked from their land and placed in zoos. In the 1980s, only about 1,100 bears remained, down from a historical population that scientists believe once numbered in the tens of thousands.
As pandas started vanishing from the wild, they grew into powerful symbols of the movement to conserve the natural world. As the plight of wildlife was making headlines, pandas — clumsy, big-eyed bears that look like plush toys come to life — emerged as the perfect mascot to rally support.
The World Wildlife Fund, an influential environmental organization, helped formalize the animals as icons when it chose the panda as its logo in 1961. Chi-Chi, An-An's wouldn't-be mate, was the inspiration for the design. (WWF, now known internationally as the World Wide Fund for Nature, chose the panda, in part, because black-and-white logos were cheaper to print.)
As pandas shot to stardom, China, the US, and zoos around the world fueled the captive breeding campaign with tens of millions of dollars in veterinary research. China also created dozens of forest reserves to protect the bears. In 2018, the country announced plans to combine many of them into a single habitat three times larger than Yellowstone National Park.
VCG via Getty Images
Giant panda cubs rest in a tree at the Shenshuping Panda Base in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China in April 2022.
These efforts have unquestionably paid off for pandas. Scientists learned from Chi-Chi and An-An's platonic exchange and, in time, they nearly perfected the difficult art of panda breeding and husbandry. That's the only reason you can see them in zoos today.
The bears are also recovering in the wild. The most recent estimates indicate that more than 1,800 pandas now live in southwestern China, and their numbers are increasing. That trend prompted the country to announce, in 2021, that pandas are no longer endangered. (The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the global authority on endangered animals, delisted pandas in 2016.)
Imagine that: The panda, the very symbol of endangered species, is no longer endangered.
But if giant pandas are mascots for endangered species, then their team is, so to speak, losing. In the time that environmental advocates were saving pandas, much of the rest of the planet's wildlife continued to deteriorate. The world now faces an unprecedented and accelerating crisis of biodiversity loss, with more than 1 million species at risk of extinction. Forests are quieter. The oceans are emptier.
The story of the panda is, in a sense, a story of success. Tales of rebounding animal populations are rare. But it carries with it a warning: The model of conservation that lifted up pandas won't work to save everything else.
The global effort to save giant pandas is rooted in our collective obsession with these bears. It dates back to at least the 1930s, when a New York City socialite journeyed East.
The only pandas on American soil back then were stuffed bears in natural history museums. But in 1936, a dress designer in NYC named Ruth Harkness traveled to China in search of a live cub. She was trying to finish what her late husband, William Harkness Jr., had started: Months earlier, the young explorer died from cancer on an expedition to capture a panda and bring it back to the US.
One November morning, Mrs. Harkness and her local guide heard squealing by the stump of a large spruce tree in the mountains outside of Chengdu, Henry Nicholls recounts in The Way of the Panda. There, she found a baby panda no larger than a kitten. The cub was perhaps less than two weeks old.
"I stood for minutes in a trance," Harkness, known for her deep voice and bright red lipstick, told a reporter in 1937. "I had discovered a most precious thing — a tiny offspring of one of Mother Nature's greatest and rarest mysteries in the animal kingdom."
She named the cub Su-Lin and took him back to New York City on a steamship. He was an instant hit. "Wherever she goes, Mrs. Harkness lugs her 10-pound jewel along in a traveling basket," the Daily News wrote at the time. "The infant panda has viewed the interior of some of New York's best restaurants since its arrival."
Bettmann Archive
Ruth Harkness holds Su-Lin in her room at the Hotel Biltmore in New York City in 1936, shortly after returning from China.
What makes animals like the panda so popular? Maybe it's their looks, their striking appearance, cute and fearsome all at once. Pandas also exploit our parenting instincts. Cubs have round faces with big cheeks, and they tumble about like helpless toddlers. (We also tend to like what we can relate to. Fellow mammals with arms? Sure. Freshwater mussels? Not so much.)
Harkness eventually brought Su-Lin to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, where the cub — the first live panda in the US — drew a record 53,000 visitors on the first day he was displayed.
It was China, however, that turned the bears into a global sensation.
In the 1970s, the Chinese government began sending wild-caught pandas around the world as state gifts — a sign of goodwill and friendship, historian Elena Songster wrote in her 2018 book, Panda Nation. There was even a term for it: Panda diplomacy.
"Giant pandas served the Chinese government as invaluable tools for putting a friendly face on China," Songster wrote. "These fuzzy creatures thawed Cold War tensions and promoted the idea that warmer relations with the inscrutable Communist power could be possible."
Most famously, China gave two pandas to President Richard Nixon in 1972 after a series of successful peace talks. The bears, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, flew to DC on Air Force One and were taken to the National Zoo "under security measures as tight as if they had been Chairman Mao," the New York Times reported. (In exchange, the US sent China Matilda and Milton, a pair of musk oxen with some kind of skin condition.)
American pandas were as famous as any celebrity. Two decades after Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling arrived, China sent the US two more bears, Shi Shi and Bai Yun, this time to the San Diego Zoo. News helicopters filmed their high-security motorcade as if they were heads of state.
"Make no mistake: That phenomenon that zookeepers call 'pandamania' is back," the LA Times wrote in 1996. "No animal in the history of US zoos brings the crowds and the awe-struck response of pandas."
Irving Haberman/IH Images/Getty Images
Photographers get close-up photographs of a giant panda eating bamboo shoots and leaves at the Bronx Zoo in New York circa 1947.
Pandamania was good for zoos and for China. It wasn't necessarily good for wild pandas.
In the 1980s, China stopped giving away pandas as state gifts but began loaning them out for a few months at a time, often at the expense of the wild population. George Schaller, then director of science at a large environmental organization called the Wildlife Conservation Society, criticized these short-term loans as "rent-a-panda" programs.
"I have a nightmare vision of evermore pandas being drained from the wild until the species exists only in captivity," he wrote in his 1993 book The Last Panda.
In those years, pandas were facing other pressures in their homeland. Mines and human developments in Sichuan Province were replacing forests. Meanwhile, pandas were running out of food — stirring up fears that the world's most beloved animal might soon go extinct.
Pandas, like humans, are technically omnivores. About 6,000 years ago, however, they stopped consuming meat, for the most part. Today, pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo.
While bamboo grows abundantly in China, it has a few critical shortcomings. Like celery, it doesn't have many calories, so pandas have to spend half of the day eating. Plus, they can't put on enough fat to hibernate in the winter like other bears.
Bamboo is also a somewhat unreliable food source. Every so often, at seemingly random intervals, entire hillsides of bamboo stalks flower, produce seeds, and die.
Normally, only one or a few bamboo species might flower at the same time, so pandas can just forage for other varieties if they need to. But in the '70s, multiple species died all at once, according to Songster, causing the bears to starve. By some estimates, more than 100 died. Then in the '80s, bamboo forests flowered and died once again, fueling concerns that pandas were at risk of extinction (not to mention reports that pandas were looting food from peoples' homes).
Although it's not clear whether the second bamboo die-off actually harmed many pandas, it helped ignite the global campaign to save these animals — at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
China and groups such as WWF relied on two main approaches. One was to establish a system of protected areas that prohibited hunting, logging, and other harmful human activities, as China has done. Another was to build out a massive breeding operation, the likes of which the world had never seen.
Kin Cheung/AP
One-month-old panda triplets rest as they receive a body check at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, China, in August 2014.
He Haiyang/Sichuan Daily/VCG via Getty Images
A giant panda cub is seen at the Shenshuping Panda Base in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China in July 2021.
Liu Jin/AFP via Getty Images
Breeders play with panda cubs at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong, China, in February 2007.
Breeding animals in captivity can theoretically help refresh a dwindling wild animal population. It also helps restock zoos. Without breeding pandas or taking them from the wild, zoos would eventually run out of their biggest attractions. That's a problem, not only for zoos but for conservation, said William McShea, a scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
"If you're going to sell people on giant pandas, you need to show people a giant panda," he said. (Pandas are "great showmen," McShea added. "Giant pandas will sit there and essentially do tricks for you all day long.")
Breeding pandas, however, is a challenge.
Female pandas ovulate just once a year for one to three days. In the wild, males will congregate along ridge tops in the spring and "a stream of visiting females in heat keeps the mating activity intense," McShea has written. In captivity, however, vets have to introduce a pair of pandas at just the right time. Even then, the bears may prefer to swat at each other rather than have sex.
"There was nothing easy about any of it," said David Kersey, an associate professor of physiology at Western University who helped develop the National Zoo's captive breeding program.
In several instances, zoos have tried using videos of pandas copulating, a.k.a. panda porn, to get the bears in the mood. This is not a joke. At one of the most famous breeding facilities in China, scientists showed a video of pandas mating to a five-year-old female bear named Ke Lin because she kept rejecting her mate, Yongyong.
"We played them the film and she took great interest in it," a spokesman at the Chengdu facility told the Independent. "After that, there was no stopping her and they mated successfully."
Zookeepers have also tried giving pandas viagra and working them out. In 2011, keepers at the National Zoo ran Tian Tian, a popular male panda, through a sort of sex training program designed to strengthen his legs. "We're building up his stamina," Brandie Smith, a senior curator at the zoo, told the Washington Post. "I think Tian is in pretty good shape, but ... we're turning him into an Olympic athlete."
The early years of panda breeding were full of disasters. In one case, a male panda in Japan reportedly died during a routine electro-ejaculation procedure — which involves a veterinarian sending a small shock to the animal's prostate to get him to produce semen. Zookeepers also had a hard time figuring out if a bear was pregnant until right before she gave birth. Infants are tiny, weighing just 3 to 5 ounces. During ultrasounds, zookeepers would occasionally confuse feces for a fetus. It was a mess.
Yet little by little, the science improved. Vets figured out how to tell exactly when a female is ovulating and in heat. They also learned which males make the perfect genetic match. "We've seen the success rate of breeding just skyrocket," Kersey said.
Scientists also learned how to keep more babies alive. In the '90s, the survival rate of captive cubs in China was about 10 percent, according to Qiongyu Huang, a wildlife biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Today, it's almost 90 percent, he said. There are now around 600 pandas in captivity.
"Veterinary science has done an outstanding job," said Marc Brody, president of the NGO Panda Mountain, who's worked on panda conservation for more than two decades.
Pandas are a threatened species, still just one step away from the classification of endangered. But along with China's growing efforts to protect a massive area of forested land, captive breeding has, for now, managed to avert their extinction. "The turnaround in China has just been remarkable," McShea said.
Pandas are one of several iconic creatures that have for decades drawn the bulk of conservation support and public attention. Tigers, mountain gorillas, wolves, and elephants are other examples.
Pouring resources into a handful of popular animals was the dominant approach to conservation in the late 20th century, said Jason Gilchrist, an ecologist at Edinburgh Napier University. The idea was to use those flashy species to draw in funding that could trickle down to other animals — in other words, pandas could be tools for conservation, not just diplomacy. Plus, protecting land for one kind of animal can shield a whole host of others.
This approach, known as single-species conservation, has worked to some degree, especially for nature's A-listers. Since 2008, for example, India has doubled its wild population of tigers. The number of mountain gorillas in Central Africa is up, too, as is the US population of gray wolves and bald eagles. Recent research also shows that past conservation efforts have, at least temporarily, helped prevent a number of bird and mammal species from going extinct.
Still, it's hard to see this species-focused model as a success, some scientists say, if the ultimate goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity and the countless benefits it provides. On this endeavor, the world has failed.
Praveeni Chamathka for Vox
Since 1970, as the campaign to save pandas was ramping up, populations of most major animal groups including birds, mammals, and fish have declined by an average of 69 percent. Species without popular appeal are often worse off. One-fifth of reptiles such as crocodiles and turtles are now threatened with extinction. Mussels are in peril, as are corals — two animals that provide essential services for us and other creatures. (The latter, for example, provide shelter for fish and safeguard coastal communities from flooding. Popularity isn't always a sign of ecological importance.)
Furthermore, parks designed to protect charismatic species don't always safeguard other animals. A 2020 study in the journal Nature, for example, found that four species of large carnivores (the leopard, snow leopard, wolf, and an Asian dog called a dhole) have declined across panda habitat since the mid-20th century. Another study, published in 2021, found that populations of several species that overlap with giant pandas, including the Asiatic black bear, Chinese serow, and forest musk deer, have all plummeted, as well. (Panda preserves may have slowed these species' declines.)
"Panda conservation doesn't appear to be benefiting other species, or the wider ecosystem," Gilchrist wrote about the 2020 study. "These findings shake the foundations of one of conservation's most enduring ideas — that investing time and money into protecting particular large, influential species can pay dividends for the other species and habitats they coexist with."
Put another way, "you're essentially sleepwalking into losing biodiversity by focusing resources on specific species," Gilchrist told Vox.
Breeding animals in captivity — now a widespread practice among zoos — also has questionable benefits for wild populations, according to some researchers. "Captive breeding is not a conservation strategy," said Jillian Ryan, a researcher who wrote her dissertation at the University of South Australia on panda conservation.
Xinhua/Xue Yubin via Getty Images
Giant panda Hua Yan, from the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, is released into the wild at Liziping Nature Reserve in Ya'an, China, in October 2016.
Zoos "carefully breed their animals as if they might be called upon at any moment to release them, like Noah throwing open the doors to the ark," Emma Marris wrote in the 2021 book Wild Souls: Freedom and flourishing in the non-human world. "But that day of release never quite seems to come."
Zoos rarely reintroduce animals to the wild because they don't often survive, Ryan said.
A dozen or so captive pandas have been released in China so far, and at least a few of them have died. The first panda scientists ever released, named Xiang Xiang (or "Lucky"), died in 2007, less than a year after his return to the wild. He likely fell out of a tree following a fight with wild-born pandas, according to multiple news reports.
"Any reintroduction program has an inherent challenge: You're increasing the potential for the animal to die," said Jake Owens, director of conservation at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens. "The nice thing about zoos is that they do provide really high care."
Owens and some other researchers argue that captive breeding can be an essential tool to avert extinction. It's helped species like the endangered California condor recover, he says. Zoos and breeding facilities also help people fall in love with pandas, he said, which has put pressure on China to conserve their habitat.
But using zoo animals as inspiration for conservation has its limits, Marris argues. "There's no unambiguous evidence that zoos are making visitors care more about conservation or take any action to support it," she writes. People go to the zoo, she added, to be entertained.
Some scholars also argue that campaigns to save charismatic animals have distorted the human relationship with nature. Pandas, and most other highly charismatic species, are only visible in zoos or protected areas far from cities, reinforcing the idea that nature is something to look at, something apart from ourselves. Yet we all exist within ecosystems and depend on the services they provide, from water purification to crop pollination.
Visitors take photographs of giant panda cub Xiang Xiang at Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo, Japan, in February 2018.
Seven-month-old panda cub Xiang Xiang rests on a tree stump as adoring fans photograph her.
Indeed, most of the world's remaining biodiversity exists alongside humanity — all 8 billion of us. To conserve wildlife, people will need to steward the plants and animals in their own backyards, in cities, in places they consider their home, said David Jachowski, a professor of wildlife ecology at Clemson University.
The environmental movement is changing. In recent decades, large environmental groups have adopted a more ecosystem-scale approach to their work.
In a previous interview with Vox, Marco Lambertini, then the head of WWF International, said that using pandas and tigers to inspire the public to care about wildlife was incredibly effective. That approach helped WWF grow into the world's largest environmental organization. But he acknowledged that the nonprofit could have done a better job at "connecting the dots," linking wildlife to ecosystems and all the benefits they provide for people. (WWF told Vox that ecosystem-based approaches have always been core to the organization's strategy.)
Perhaps, then, it doesn't make sense to have a single species as the mascot for conservation.
If there were one animal to represent the movement to conserve the natural world, the panda is probably the wrong one. It could be the weasel, Jachowski says; they're predators that help sustain the food chain. Other researchers have argued that even earthworms would be better candidates.
Worms and weasels might not have the appeal of pandas. But they're linchpins in a complex web of life that's unraveling before our eyes. To sustain these and so many other underrated animals — the moths and flies, the bats and shrews — is to sustain the world's ecosystems. It is to sustain ourselves.
Benji Jones is a senior environmental reporter at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher.
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Russia's war in Ukraine pushes Doomsday Clock to closest point to midnight in history
Russia's war in Ukraine has significantly raised the risk of global self-annihilation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned Tuesday, moving forward the Doomsday Clock to its closest point to midnight ever. The Doomsday Clock is meant to measure the gravest risks to human existence to pressure world leaders to recommit to addressing extinction-level challenges,...
Russia's war in Ukraine has significantly raised the risk of global self-annihilation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned Tuesday, moving forward the Doomsday Clock to its closest point to midnight ever. The Doomsday Clock is meant to measure the gravest risks to human existence to pressure world leaders to recommit to addressing extinction-level challenges, such as the threat of nuclear weapon use, but has grown to include the dangers of climate change and biological risks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The clock has moved to 90 seconds before midnight, 10 seconds closer than when it was last set in January 2022, shortly before Russia launched its invasion against Ukraine on Feb. 24. The consortium of scientists noted then "that without swift and focused action, truly catastrophic events are more likely," Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said Tuesday. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has earlier condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has called Russian President Vladimir Putin's rhetoric around the use of nuclear weapons "outrageous." "The possibilities that the conflict could spin out of anyone's control remains high," Bronson warned, citing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres's earlier warning that the world has entered a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War. The announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists occurred the same day that the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Conference of Nuclear Disarmament criticized Russia for delaying for a second time strategic nuclear talks between Washington and Moscow aimed at nuclear arms reduction. Russia has earlier said it delayed meeting for the talks over U.S. support for Ukraine. Asked by a Russian reporter Tuesday how nuclear talks between Washington and Moscow can resume as the U.S. and other Western nations debate sending tanks and long-range weapons to Ukraine, former world leaders and scientists spoke up in continuing to arm Ukraine. "I think they need more tanks," Elbegdorj Tsakhia, former president and prime minister of Mongolia, said of Ukraine. "They have no time to wait. I think they need more support. More weapons, more tanks." Steve Fetter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said that the U.S. and Russia should be able to pursue nuclear talks despite the war in Ukraine, "just as we did during the darkest days of the Cold War," but also warned against Russia succeeding in Ukraine. "If Russia prevails in Ukraine, other non-nuclear countries may conclude that they can't be defended from attack against nuclear-armed adversaries and that could undermine the nonproliferation regime and fuel a new round of proliferation," he said. Russia's war in Ukraine has also worsened other global challenges, such as climate change and biological risk. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists released its findings for the first time in English, Russian and Ukrainian with the intention to have it read in the capitals most affected, the consortium of scientists said. Suzet McKinney, principal and director of life sciences at Sterling Bay and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, raised the warning around biological threats, both natural and manmade. She warned that Russia, North Korea and Iran all continue to maintain biological weapons program and that the risk Russia will deploy biological weapons in Ukraine "continues to escalate as conditions there become more and more chaotic." Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, McKinney said the international community needs to improve its ability to prevent disease outbreaks and to detect them quickly when they occur, both from disease originating in animals and transmitted to humans and laboratory accidents. "Events like COVID-19 can no longer be considered rare, once in a century occurrences," she said. On climate change, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has contributed to two countervailing dynamics, said Sivan Kartha, senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute. The push to decouple from Russia's oil and gas exports has spurred investment in renewables, Kartha said, but high natural gas prices have "driven a frenzied push to develop new natural gas supplies," and a short-term reliance on coal in power plants, "leading this past year to be a record high for global coal consumption." Bronson, in closing remarks, said the clock moving closer to midnight is sending a message to the public to exert more pressure on leaders to address these fatal risks. "We're in a situation now where leaders aren't doing what they need to and we need the public, desperately, to make sure they focus on key issues," she said. "Those who are listening, say … 'it doesn't feel safer today,' they're not alone. We're very concerned about this. No one can do this alone, but everyone can do something. And with that, we hope that the moving of the clock as we assess where the threats are, is a motivator that we all need to pay attention to these key issues."
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Wildlife in Our Backyard
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Eryngium Proteiflorum
Exists the ideal space-time with appropriate conditions for each organism fulfills its life cycle. Exists places to be fully habitats: The Eryngium Proteiflorum is an endangered endemic flower of the Mexican Transverse Volcanic Axis. Every being has its own space and time and the reflection on the human right to alter it takes relevance in a historical moment where protecting biodiversity can be a deadly battle, where the lives of those who fight for prevention are being taken, every human has its own metaphorical Eryngium. It is not just about a flower, it is about the idea that we can posses anything we want without considering its destruction. This film honors those who have no voice and whose future is plunging into extinction.
On the Brink
A short movie explaining how sea lice coming from fish farms in British Columbia are harming wild salmon to the brink of extinction.
Sockeye Salmon. Red Fish
Sockeye, a species of wild salmon, is born in Kamchatkan waters and spends its entire life in the Pacific Ocean. Only once does it return to fresh waters - to give offspring, start the circle of life, and die. It is an inexhaustible resource that feeds billions of people on the planet, restored every year! But soon, we may find ourselves facing the unimaginable: humans will exhaust the inexhaustible!


Safari Outdoor. The ultimate hunting community app.
Trophy hunters arguably belong to one of the most misunderstood communities on the planet today. Even though a considerable number of them are the same conservationists hard at work to protect endangered wildlife, their reputation has been tarnished by a disproportionate group of savage poachers and unethical hunters.
Not only are hunting experiences unwelcomed by a number of social groups on social media, according to law, hunting products may not be advertised online. Safari Outdoor, providers of high end hunting products decided to create their very own social network to combat this challenge.
The Safari Outdoor mobile app is a platform that enables users to upload photos, share their stories and outdoor experiences on the newsfeed. The app includes a listing of game farms backed by Safari Outdoor, including hunting facilities, accommodation and packages.
Posts are geo-linked, so users can get an idea of where the hunting hot spots are, as well as the less-explored game farms for hunters that love to venture off the beaten track.
The screen designs for Safari Outdoor's mobile app were carefully crafted to boost their brand identity, making use of dark UI (User Interface), and masculine look and feel to appeal to their target market. Clever use of iconography was key to making the app more interactive, and the brand icons serve as a powerful add-on, maximising brand presence in front of a captured audience.
This was a fairly sizeable project due to its social and interactive nature, and required meticulous implementation of the numerous screens that had to be designed for each scenario.
The Safari Outdoor mobile app has a first phase release available on the app stores, with plans to expand on the offering where users can tap on a product mentioned in a user post and add it straight to their basket. Game farms will also have more advertising opportunities as the community of users grows.
Are you an adventurous, responsible trophy hunter? Download the app today via the App Store or Google Play.
Check out this article for more on ethical trophy hunting.


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Business Government National Politics Technology
Report: Firm at Center of Facebook Privacy Scandal to Close
May 2, 2018 May 3, 2018 ASSOCIATED PRESS
Facebook, privacy
NEW YORK (AP) — The data firm at the center of Facebook's privacy debacle is closing its doors, according to a published report.
Cambridge Analytica has been linked to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The British firm suspended CEO Alexander Tayler in April amid investigations.
The Wall Street Journal says Wednesday's shutdown comes as the firm is losing clients and facing legal fees from the Facebook case. Cambridge Analytica did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cambridge Analytica sought information on Facebook to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate. The company was able to amass the database quickly with the help of an app that appeared to be a personality test. The app collected data on tens of millions of people and their Facebook friends, even those who did not download the app themselves.
Facebook has since tightened its privacy restrictions. Cambridge has denied wrongdoing, and Trump's campaign has said it didn't use Cambridge's data.
The firm has said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation into Facebook and how it uses data. But U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in March the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.
Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.
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Spiritualists
In 1848, the Fox sisters reported communicating with spirits through rappings in their Hydesville, New York home.[1] Sparked by this revelation, Spiritualists began forming churches and spirit circles throughout the United States in hope of similarly contacting the dead.[2] Wisconsin became a center for the Spiritualist movement, which counted among its followers such dignitaries as the Wisconsin Historical Society's Lyman Draper and Territorial Governor Nathaniel Tallmadge.[3] The first Milwaukee Spiritualist congregation was founded in 1851.[4] Although the movement's popularity waned after the 1920s, the Milwaukee area counted three congregational affiliates of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches in 1948.[5] The First Spiritualist Church of West Allis is the sole remaining local congregation.[6] The nation's only Spiritualist college, the Morris Pratt Institute, is located in Wauwatosa.[7]
This institution, which opened in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1903, grew out of Walworth and Jefferson Counties' strong Spiritualist communities.[8] Morris Pratt, a follower of renowned local medium Mary Hayes Chynoweth, constructed an elaborate Watertown home for the college.[9] Classes were offered in traditional subjects as well as uniquely Spiritualist fields.[10] Facing declining enrollment and financial difficulties in the 1930s and 1940s, the school relocated to Wauwatosa in 1947.[11] The Institute continues to offer correspondence courses, on-site short courses, and a research library.[12]
While accounts differ, it is possible that Leafy Anderson, founder of the African-American Spiritualist movement in New Orleans, was born in Wisconsin.[13] The Theosophical Society in America, whose founders pursued Spiritualism before codifying beliefs different from traditional Spiritualism, maintains a presence on Milwaukee's East Side.[14]
^ Karen Abbott, "The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism," Smithsonian.com, October 30, 2012, accessed September 21, 2016.
^ Mary Farrell Bednarowski, "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century," Wisconsin Magazine of History 59, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 4-6.
^ Bednarowski, "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century," 6.
^ Bednarowski, "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century," 19; National Spiritualist Association of United States of America, Centennial Book of Modern Spiritualism in America (Chicago, IL: The Association, 1948), 244-245.
^ "Directory of Churches," National Spiritualist Association of Churches website, https://www.nsac.org/churches.php, accessed September 21, 2016. For more on the First Spiritualist Church of West Allis, see "First Spiritualist Church of West Allis," Meetup.com, accessed September 19, 2016.
^ Bednarowski, "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century," 6; "Morris Pratt Institute (MPI)," National Spiritualist Association of Churches website, https://www.nsac.org/mpi.php, accessed September 21, 2016. The Morris Pratt Institute address is listed as Milwaukee, but it is actually in the City of Wauwatosa. See "City Comprehensive Plan: Map 1.1-1 Jurisdictional Boundaries," City of Wauwatosa, WI website, http://wauwatosa.net/index.aspx?nid=395, accessed September 21, 2016.
^ Bednarowksi, "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century," 15-18; "History," Morris Pratt Institute website, accessed September 21, 2016.
^ "History," Morris Pratt Institute website, accessed September 21, 2016; Bednarowski, 17-18.
^ "History," Morris Pratt Institute website, accessed September 21, 2016.
^ "Pratt Made Whitewater a Center of Spiritualism," Whitewater Register, June 15, 1972, Morris Pratt Institute Vertical File, Irvin L. Young Memorial Library, accessed September 21, 2016; Centennial Book, 127.
^ "Courses" and "Events," Morris Pratt Institute website, accessed September 21, 2016; "Morris Pratt Institute (MPI)," National Spiritualist Association of Churches website, https://www.nsac.org/mpi.php, accessed September 21, 2016.
^ Jason Berry, The Spirit of Black Hawk: A Mystery of Africans and Indians (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 66-69; Robert L. Johns, "Leafy Anderson," in Notable Black American Women, vol. 2, ed. Jessie Carney Smith (New York, NY: Gale Research, 1996), 9-11.
^ Robert S. Ellwood, "Occult Movements in America," in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements, vol. 2, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), 717; "Milwaukee Lodge," Theosophical Society in Milwaukee website, accessed September 21, 2016.
Bednarowski, Mary Farrell. "Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century." Wisconsin Magazine of History 59, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 3-19.
National Spiritualist Association of United States of America. Centennial Book of Modern Spiritualism in America. Chicago, IL: The Association, 1948.


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