QUICK HITS

1 Photographer accuses Taylor Swift’s dad of punching

him: A photographer has told police he was punched in the face by Taylor Swift’s father on the Sydney waterfront hours after the pop star’s Australian tour ended. Ben McDonald said he provided police with a statement alleging the assault by Scott Swift at the Neutral Bay Wharf on Tuesday where the father and daughter had just come ashore from a yacht. Police confirmed they were investigating the alleged assault. Taylor Swift’s representative accused members of the media of aggression during the interaction.

2 Bird flu found on Antarctica: A deadly strain of bird flu has been found on mainland Antarctica for the first time, according to scientists, raising concerns over the risk of mass mortality of the continent’s huge colonies of penguins and other animals found nowhere else on Earth. Researchers on Feb. 24 confirmed the presence of the H5 subtype of avian influenza in two dead seabirds, called skuas, near an Argentine base and scientific research station located on the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the Spanish National Research Council.

Amount of frigid winter air is 3

near a record low: The amount of cold air above the Northern Hemisphere this winter is near a record low, an unambiguous signal of the planet’s warming climate, according to a new analysis of 76 years of temperature data from about a mile above the ground. The depleted cold-air supply means blasts of Arctic air lack the vigor of the past, while incursions of unusually mild weather can be more frequent and intense.

Jonathan Uhr, immunologist 4 who advanced cancer treatment, dies at 96:

Jonathan W. Uhr, a medical researcher who expanded the field of immunology with studies that helped explain how antibodies work, led to a therapy that effectively eradicated a blood disorder that could be fatal for newborns, and opened promising new avenues in the treatment of cancer, died Feb. 15 at a hospice center in Dallas. He was 96. He had prostate cancer, said his wife, Ginger Uhr.

Experimental weight loss drug 5

could out-do Ozempic: Viking Therapeutics posted results of an experimental drug that showed even better weight loss than the current market-leading drugs, a sign that the dominance of Ozempic and Mounjaro is far from assured. Viking said Tuesday that a mid-stage trial showed that obese or overweight patients on the highest dose of its drug lost an average of about 14.7% of their body weight after injecting it once weekly for 13 weeks.