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The 2016 peace treaty that ended decades of civil conflict in Colombia has transformed the country into a paradise for birdwatchers. The deal freed up vast swathes of forest previously dominated by armed groups, making them accessible to wildlife enthusiasts and researchers alike. For years, Colombia’s rich biodiversity was hidden behind the barriers of a long-running civil war. The nation’s forests, home to an astonishing array of bird species, were largely off-limits due to the presence of guerrillas and the associated dangers. However, the peace agreement has opened up these once-inaccessible areas, revealing a treasure trove of avian diversity. Birdwatchers from all over the world are now flocking to Colombia to witness its avian wonders. The country boasts over 1,900 species of birds,...

US mobile carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile suffered an outage that impacted travelers in Europe. Many vacationers have lost access to essential phone features such as data, calls and texts. Social media is full of frustrated travelers from Britain to Turkey, unable to connect for 24 hours. The cause of the outage remains unclear, but appears to be related to an issue with a third-party provider used for international roaming. Carriers have recognized the problem: AT&T says its network is operating normally, but some international customers may experience outages due to an external issue. They are working with a roaming partner to resolve the issue. Verizon informed customers on social media that its teams are working with local providers to resolve the issue. T-Mobile also confirmed t...

Concluding a years-long legal saga, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to return to Australia after pleading guilty to a single charge relating to the publication of classified US documents. The 52-year-old Australian citizen avoided a lengthy prison sentence by admitting guilt at a remote hearing in an American territory in the Pacific. This settlement marks a significant development in a case that has become a battleground for press freedom and national security concerns. From famous whistleblower to legal standoff Assange rose to prominence in the 2010s, when WikiLeaks published a series of sensitive documents exposing details of US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with diplomatic cables. These leaks have sparked heated debate, with some praising Assange as a ch...

Each class would include around 15 fighters each, allowing top talent to face off against each other regularly. The move would effectively create a single boxing entity that would replace the sometimes chaotic and frustrating system of warring fight promoters and sanctioning bodies. The new entity would have the resources and fighters to stage high-profile cards around the world. And unlike many of the sports that Saudi Arabia has already attempted to revolutionize, professional boxing may be ripe for reinvention. The sport has lost its luster and some of its allure in recent decades and is currently run by a tangled web of rival promoters and disparate sanctioning bodies who stage their own bouts and award their own titles. That leaves fans to sift through a confusing system that ofte...

Last week, Israeli soldiers corrected the tracks of a tank near the Gaza border in southern Israel.Credit…Jack Guez/Agency France-Presse — Getty Images The intense phase of Israel's war against Hamas "is coming to an end," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Sunday evening interview on Israeli television, though he stressed that this does not mean the conflict is coming to an end. .After the operation in Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city and the final hub of Israel's ground offensive, the prime minister said, Israel will continue to "mow the lawn" - a term long used in Israeli security circles to denote the use of force aimed at limiting the resurgence of militant organizations.Netanyahu's remarks were the latest suggestion from senior Israeli officials that the war could soon enter ...

She and her team hunted down image negatives containing fireballs stored at the German Aerospace Center in Augsburg. After digitizing the images, the researchers estimated various parameters related to the incoming meteors, such as their masses, shapes, speeds and entry angles. Using this data, the researchers identified a dozen events that most likely produced sizable meteorites. Before 1976 only three had occurred. The team reconstructed the trajectory of each of those three fireballs and calculated where the meteorites would most likely be found. There was only one match to the location where the Ischgl meteorite was recovered. This led researchers to conclude that the fireball that crossed the horizon in the early morning hours of November 24, 1970 gave birth to the Ischgl meteori...

In February, when Dr. Ghayyda traveled to the Egyptian capital to register his parents, sister and nephew, he took his 23-year-old son with him to avoid carrying more than $10,000. By then he had raised about $25,000. “The whole process was quite long, complex and uncertain,” he said. In an interview in his office in Cairo, Mr. Organi spoke at length and in detail about Hala's activities, although he said his role in the company was limited and that he was just one of many shareholders. Hala has long been listed on Organi Group's website as one of the conglomerate's companies, but the reference appears to have been removed recently. Organi Group did not respond to a request for comment when asked why they removed Hala from their website. Mr. Organi described Hala as a tour company, “jus...

Tymofii Brik, a sociologist at the Kyiv School of Economics, said polls “suggest that the willingness to defend the nation among Ukrainians has remained constant” throughout the war, with about a third of people indicating a willingness to serve. However, Ukraine's mobilization has opened up painful divisions in society. Vitaliy Bondarenko, a 29-year-old conscript officer from Lviv, said the men ran away every time his vehicle stopped. “They see us and run away,” he said. Many Ukrainian soldiers resent those who try to avoid the draft, arguing that their actions weaken their country's war effort. “Given the intensity of the current fighting, the army cannot fight without a regular replenishment of personnel,” said another recently enlisted Mykyta, 25, who gave only his first name accordi...

The State Department announced Friday that it will impose sanctions on a right-wing Israeli group that tried to prevent aid from reaching people in the Gaza Strip by blocking trucks traveling from Jordan to the coastal enclave.The department's statement said the sanctioned organization, Tzav 9, was "a violent Israeli extremist group that blocked, harassed and damaged convoys carrying life-saving humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza."Members of the group have tried for months to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza, the department said. They blocked roads on which aid trucks travel between Jordan and Gaza, including the West Bank, and in some cases broke into trucks, damaging them and dumping aid packages on the road, the agency said. Some Israeli activists have...

Among other things, the conflict has given Pyongyang a rare opportunity to evaluate the performance of its missiles in combat and potentially refine their design. North Korea would also welcome greater access to sophisticated Russian military technology, including its extensive knowledge of satellites. Two months after Kim's visit to Russia last year, North Korea put its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, a launch that South Korean officials say was aided by technological assistance from Moscow. Russia, which has the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and one of the most sophisticated submarine programs, has a number of other technologies of interest to North Korea. Despite many years of disarmament efforts by Washington and the United Nations, Pyongyang has cond...