Foreign News
T. rex skeleton sells for more than $6m
BBC reported that a skeleton of a 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex has been sold to a private individual for 5.55 million Swiss francs ($6.2m; £5m).
This is the first time a T. rex has been auctioned in Europe. The specimen has been described as ”one of the most spectacular T. rex skeletons in existence”, measuring 11.6m long and 3.9m tall.
Scientists are concerned about the increasing number of dinosaur fossils ending up in private collections.
It’s not the first auction of T. rex, or the highest price fetched, but such sales are relatively rare. Last year a T. rex skeleton which was expected to fetch up to $25m (£21m) at auction was withdrawn after doubts were raised over where parts of it had come from.
The name of this skeleton is “293 Trinity“, because it is built from three different T. rexes from US dinosaur sites in Montana and Wyoming. It is made up of 293 separate bones from specimens retrieved between 2008 and 2013.
Most auctioned dinosaur skeletons are made up partly of casts or replacements but more than half of 293 Trinity is real bone, a relatively high percentage.
It was sold at the Koller auction house in Zurich. In an interview for the firm’s website, Dr Hans-Jacob Siber of The Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Switzerland, described Trinity as a “special beast”. “There are only 20 or 30 good T. rex skeletons in the world and this is one of the bigger and better ones,” he said.
Police in Ecuador say they have arrested four people in connection with an attack by gunmen at a cockfighting ring in which 12 people died.
Weapons and replica police and army uniforms were seized during police raids in the north-western Manabí province on Friday – a day after the attack in the rural community of La Valencia.
Footage of the attack shared on social media showed gunmen entering the ring and opening fire, as terrified spectators dived for cover.
Reports in local media suggested the attackers in fake military gear were members of a criminal gang whose rivals were at the cockfight.
A criminal investigation has been launched by the provincial authorities.
As many as 20 criminal gangs are believed to be operating in the Latin American country, vying for control over major drug routes.
Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa has said that about 70% of the world’s cocaine now flows through Ecuador’s ports before being shipped to the US and Europe.
The drug is smuggled into Ecuador from neighbouring Colombia and Peru – the world’s two largest producers of cocaine.
This January saw 781 murders, making it the deadliest month in recent years. Many of them were related to the illegal drug trade.
[BBC]
Robots ran alongside humans at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing on Saturday.
Twenty-one humanoid robots, designed by Chinese manufacturers, raced alongside thousands of runners over a 21km (13-mile) course that included slopes, turns and uneven surfaces.
Some robots completed the race, while others struggled from the beginning. One robot fell at the starting line and lay flat for several minutes before getting up and taking off.
While robots have made appearances at marathons in China in the past, this is the first time they have raced against humans over the course of a half-marathon.
[BBC]
A United States judge has ruled that Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, dealing another blow to the tech titan in an antitrust case brought by the US government.
On Thursday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Google unlawfully monopolised markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. Antitrust enforcers failed to show the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup of Google’s advertising products. The US Department of Justice has said that Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Google will now face the possibility of two different US courts ordering it to sell assets or change its business practices.
A judge in Washington will hold a trial next week on the DOJ’s request to make Google sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance in online search.
[Aljazeera]
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