AFP

A wild fox that breached an enclosure at Washington’s National Zoo killed 25 flamingos and one duck before escaping, the facility said Tuesday, one month after a rabid fox went on a biting spree near the Capitol.

Birdkeepers arrived early Monday to discover the carnage and spotted a fox inside the flamingo yard, the Smithsonian National Zoo said.

Staff “are devastated and mourning the loss of 25 American flamingos and one Northern pintail duck killed by a wild fox yesterday in the Zoo’s outdoor flamingo habitat,” it added.

Three flamingos were additionally injured and are being treated at the zoo’s veterinary hospital.

“This is a heartbreaking loss for us and everyone who cares about our animals,” zoo director Brandie Smith said.

The remaining flock, whittled down from 74 flamingos before the attack, has been moved to an indoor barn while the ducks have been relocated to a covered outdoor space, the zoo said.

According to zoo officials, a softball-sized hole in the metal mesh surrounding the flamingo yard was discovered, but the dig barrier around the enclosure remained intact.

“The barrier we used passed inspection and is used by other accredited zoos across the country,” Smith said. “Our focus now is on the well-being of the remaining flock and fortifying our habitats.”

In early April, a fox was put down after biting at least nine people including a congressman at the US Capitol and testing positive for rabies.

President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has responded to less than three percent of deforestation alerts, a sign that “impunity reigns” in the destruction of Brazil’s forests, an environmental monitor said Tuesday.

MapBiomas, a consortium that uses satellite images to track the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and other regions in Brazil, said it had launched a new platform to cross-check reported deforestation with government records on fines, arrests and other responses by environmental authorities.

It said that since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, the federal government had responded to just 2.17 percent of deforestation alerts.

“Despite the abundance of information and evidence of environmental crimes, oversight measures from the government are still far short of what’s needed to curb deforestation,” Ana Paula Valdiones of the Center of Life Institute (ICV), one of the groups involved in the platform, said in a statement.

The cases in which federal authorities responded corresponded to 13.1 percent of the total deforested area from January 2019 to March 2022, MapBiomas said.

It is the latest awkward news on the environment for Bolsonaro, who has drawn international condemnation for a surge in clear-cutting and fires in the Amazon, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.

Under the far-right president, who has pushed to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by more than 75 percent from the previous decade, according to official figures.

Environmental groups accuse the Bolsonaro government of encouraging deforestation with its pro-agribusiness policies and rhetoric, and of turning a blind eye to infractors.

According to the Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, Brazil’s environmental protection agency (Ibama) spent just 41 percent of its allocated policing budget last year.

The findings from the new MapBiomas platform “show that impunity still reigns when it comes to illegal deforestation in Brazil,” said Tasso Azevedo, general coordinator for the consortium of universities, environmental groups and tech companies.

The environment ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Argentine paleontologists have announced the discovery of an apex-predator dinosaur that measured three stories from nose to tail and eviscerated its prey with sharp, curved claws. 

The six-ton giant, the largest megaraptor unearthed to date, fed on smaller dinosaurs that it ripped to shreds with its talons before digging into their intestines, paleontologist Mauro Aranciaga told AFP.

It would have been the “apex predator” of its time, said Aranciaga — well deserving of its chilling scientific name “Maip macrothorax.”

The first part, “Maip,” is derived from an “evil” mythological figure of Patagonia’s indigenous Aonikenk people.

The character was associated with “the shadow of the death” that “kills with cold wind” in the Andes mountains, according to a study reporting the find in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

The second part, “macrothorax,” refers to the enormous expanse of the creature’s chest cavity — some 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) wide.

– ‘Childhood dream’ –

The newly-identified monster measured nine to 10 meters in length, larger than any previously discovered type of megaraptor — a group of flesh-eating giants that once roamed what is now South America, according to Aranciaga’s team.

It lived about 70 million years ago towards the end of the Cretaceous period in what was then a tropical forest, long before the Andes mountain range and glaciers that now define Patagonia.

The killer reptile had two sharp, curved claws per front paw, each talon some 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) long.

Aranciaga, now 29, had the good fortune of finding the first piece of Maip on his first-ever professional expedition three years ago to Argentina’s Santa Cruz province.

This led to months of meticulous digging, cleaning and classification of a large cache of bones: vertebrae as well as bits of rib, hip, tail and arm.

“When I lifted the vertebra and saw that it had the characteristics of a megaraptor, it was really a huge thrill,” recalled Aranciaga.

“Somehow I fulfilled my childhood dream… finding a new fossil and it turning out to be a megaraptor: the group in which I specialize,” he told AFP.

Maip was one of the last megaraptors to inhabit Earth before the dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, according to Fernando Novas of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences’ Laboratory of Comparative Anatomy.

It is also the southernmost megaraptor ever found, added Aranciaga, a doctoral fellow at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet).

Pfizer executives said Tuesday they are confident of strong demand for the company’s Covid-19 antiviral treatment amid easing pandemic rules as the big drugmaker reported another round of strong earnings.

The US pharmaceutical giant, reporting surging first-quarter profits based on a big jump in revenues from its Covid-19 vaccine, said its Paxlovid treatment for the virus would be a valuable means for governments to limit the severity of outbreaks as they ease social distancing and masking rules.

Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said the company is seeing “very strong signs of increasing demand for Paxlovid as it remains one of the best tools we have.”

Citing rising vaccine fatigue, Bourla said the company is also focused on a Covid-19 vaccine booster that provides immunity for a year.

“People are tired of the repeated booster, so it is extremely important to come to a vaccine that could be a yearly vaccine,” Bourla told analysts on a conference call, adding that while the company has made progress on this front, “it’s not technically easy to achieve.”

“There’s a tremendous pressure across the world to get our lives back,” Bourla said of the social and political impetus to ease pandemic rules. “As a result of these things it’s very clear that we will have waves” of Covid-19 infections.

– ‘Rebound’ risk –

The US drugmaker reported first-quarter profits of $7.9 billion, up 61 percent, based on a 77 percent surge in revenues to $25.7 billion.

Pfizer lowered its full-year adjusted profits by 10 cents to $6.25 to $6.45 a share, due in part to currency movements.

But the company confirmed its full-year revenue forecast of about $100 billion, which is an approximately 23 percent increase on the 2021 level. More than half the revenues are expected to come from the Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic.

Pfizer, which has shipped some 3.4 billion doses of vaccine to 179 countries, has won regulatory approval for its shot in most age groups, but continues to study its use in children younger than five.

In the first quarter, Paxlovid took in $1.5 billion in global sales. But Pfizer expects 2022 sales of the medicine of $22 billion as it ramps up production and distribution.

The company expects to produce 120 million courses of the Paxlovid oral pills in 2022, with distribution programs scaling up in the United States and other markets.

The treatment has received emergency or conditional approval in 40 countries so far, the company said.

“What we are seeing is… there is demand for this product,” said Pfizer biopharmaceuticals group president Angela Hwang, citing the removal of mask mandates as a factor in spreading cases. 

“What we’re also seeing is that we don’t have any inventory on hand,” Hwang said. “Every dose that we produce is being shipped out.”

Pfizer executives said they were researching “rebound” Covid-19 cases in which some patients who took Paxlovid have reported renewed symptoms. 

But company officials said the data thus far suggests that the amount of cases is small and may have to do with unusual patient characteristics rather than the drug itself. 

The World Health Organization last month “strongly recommended” the antiviral pill Paxlovid for patients with milder forms of the disease who were still at a high risk of hospitalization. 

But WHO said it was “extremely concerned” that low- and middle-income countries would be “pushed to the end of the queue” amid tight global supplies.

Shares of Pfizer rose 2.0 percent Tuesday to $49.29.

Argentine paleontologists have announced the discovery of an apex-predator dinosaur that measured three stories from nose to tail and eviscerated its prey with sharp, curved claws. 

The six-ton giant, the largest megaraptor unearthed to date, fed on smaller dinosaurs that it ripped to shreds with its talons before digging into their intestines, paleontologist Mauro Aranciaga told AFP.

It would have been the “apex predator” of its time, said Aranciaga — well deserving of its chilling scientific name “Maip macrothorax.”

The first part, “Maip,” is derived from an “evil” mythological figure of Patagonia’s indigenous Aonikenk people.

The character was associated with “the shadow of the death” that “kills with cold wind” in the Andes mountains, according to a study reporting the find in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

The second part, “macrothorax,” refers to the enormous expanse of the creature’s chest cavity — some 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) wide.

– ‘Childhood dream’ –

The newly-identified monster measured nine to 10 meters in length, larger than any previously discovered type of megaraptor — a group of flesh-eating giants that once roamed what is now South America, according to Aranciaga’s team.

It lived about 70 million years ago towards the end of the Cretaceous period in what was then a tropical forest, long before the Andes mountain range and glaciers that now define Patagonia.

The killer reptile had two sharp, curved claws per front paw, each talon some 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) long.

Aranciaga, now 29, had the good fortune of finding the first piece of Maip on his first-ever professional expedition three years ago to Argentina’s Santa Cruz province.

This led to months of meticulous digging, cleaning and classification of a large cache of bones: vertebrae as well as bits of rib, hip, tail and arm.

“When I lifted the vertebra and saw that it had the characteristics of a megaraptor, it was really a huge thrill,” recalled Aranciaga.

“Somehow I fulfilled my childhood dream… finding a new fossil and it turning out to be a megaraptor: the group in which I specialize,” he told AFP.

Maip was one of the last megaraptors to inhabit Earth before the dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, according to Fernando Novas of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences’ Laboratory of Comparative Anatomy.

It is also the southernmost megaraptor ever found, added Aranciaga, a doctoral fellow at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet).