Protesters throw paint on Russian’s Poland ambassador
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Russia's ambassador to Poland was splattered with red paint thrown at him by protesters opposed to the war in Ukraine, preventing him from paying respects on Monday at a Warsaw cemetery to Red Army soldiers who died during World War II.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the attack, saying on her messaging app channel that "we won't be scared" while the "people of Europe should be scared to see their reflection in a mirror."
Ambassador Sergey Andreev arrived at the Soviet soldiers' cemetery to lay flowers on Victory Day, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies. The major Russian patriotic holiday was celebrated with pomp in a parade at Red Square in Moscow.
As he arrived at the Soviet Military Cemetery in the Polish capital, Andreev was met by hundreds of activists opposed to Russia's war in Ukraine. The protesters first snatched away a wreath of flowers that he had intended to lay at the cemetery and trampled it. Red paint was thrown from behind at him before a protester standing beside him threw a big blob of it in his face.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture says drought during the growing season has made farmers in most of Texas, all of Louisiana and parts of Arkansas and Mississippi eligible to apply for federal aid.
The department's Farm Service Agency says low-interest emergency loans can be used to meet various recovery needs including the replacement of equipment or livestock. They can also be used to reorganize a farming operation or refinance certain debts.
The agency will consider the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability.
USDA declares drought disasters if a county is under extreme or exceptional drought, or has had at least eight straight weeks of severe drought.
Twenty-three Mississippi counties and 20 in Arkansas are primary disaster areas, with farmers and ranchers eligible to apply for loans in another 13 counties in Mississippi and 11 in Arkansas, according to news releases.
MIAMI (AP) — Humans don't know what they're missing under the surface of a busy shipping channel in the "cruise capital of the world." Just below the keels of massive ships, an underwater camera provides a live feed from another world, showing marine life that's trying its best to resist global warming.
That camera in Miami's Government Cut is just one of the many ventures of a marine biologist and a musician who've been on a 15-year mission to raise awareness about dying coral reefs by combining science and art to bring undersea life into pop culture.
Their company — Coral Morphologic — is surfacing stunning images, putting gorgeous closeups of underwater creatures on social media, setting time-lapsed video of swaying, glowing coral to music and projecting it onto buildings, even selling a coral-themed beachwear line.
"We aren't all art. We aren't all science. We aren't all tech. We are an alchemy," said Colin Foord, who defies the looks of a typical scientist, with blue hair so spiky that it seems electrically charged. He and his business partner J.D. McKay sat down with The Associated Press to show off their work.
One of their most popular projects is the Coral City Camera, which recently passed 2 million views and usually has about 100 viewers online at any given time each day.
"We're going to actually be able to document one year of coral growth, which has never been done before in situ on a coral reef, and that's only possible because we have this technological connection right here at the port of Miami that allows us to have power and internet," Foord said.
The livestream has already revealed that staghorn and other corals can adapt and thrive even in a highly urbanized undersea environment, along with 177 species of fish, dolphins, manatees and other sea life, Foord said.
"We have these very resilient corals growing here. The primary goal of us getting it underwater was to show people there is so much marine life right here in our city," Foord said.
McKay, meanwhile, sounds like a Broadway producer as he describes how he also films the creatures in their Miami lab, growing coral in tanks to get them ready for closeups in glorious color.
"We essentially create a set with one of these aquariums, and then obviously there's actors — coral or shrimp or whatever — and then we film it, and then I get a vibe, whatever might be happening in the scene, and then I soundtrack it with some ambient like sounds, something very oceanic," McKay explained.
Their latest production, " Coral City Flourotour, " will be shown on the New World Center Wallscape this week as the Aspen Institute hosts a major climate conference in Miami Beach. Foord is speaking on a panel about how the ocean's natural systems can help humans learn to combat impacts of climate change. The talk's title? "The Ocean is a Superhero."
"I think when we can recognize that we're all this one family of life and everything is interconnected, that hopefully we can make meaningful changes now, so that future generations don't have to live in a world of wildfires and melted ice caps and dead oceans," Foord told the AP.
Their mission is urgent: After 500 million years on Earth, these species are under assault from climate change. The warming oceans prompt coral bleaching and raise the risk of infectious diseases that can cause mass dieoffs in coral, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Stronger storms and changes in water chemistry can destroy reef structures, while altered currents sweep away food and larvae.
"Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems," NOAA said in a recent report.
That gets at the second part of Coral Morphologic's name. "What does it mean to be morphologic? It really means having to adapt because the environment is always changing," Foord said.
The staghorn, elkhorn and brain coral living in Government Cut provide a real-world example of how coral communities can adapt to such things as rising heat and polluted runoff, even in such an unlikely setting as the port of Miami.