Researchers who dangled a dozen endangered rhinos upside down earn Ig Nobel
CBSN
What happens when you hang a rhinoceros upside down? That's what a group of researchers from Cornell University and Namibia's Ministry of Environment wanted to find out. So they dangled a dozen tranquilized black rhinos from a crane — and earned an award for their work.
Science humor magazine Improbable Research awarded the study an Ig Nobel — a takeoff on the famed Nobel Prize — for transportation, one of 10 research projects cited Thursday "for achievements that first make people laugh then make them think." The study tested how rhinos fare upside down because that's increasingly how conservationists move the critically endangered animals — suspended from a helicopter with a 130-foot chain while the 1,400-pound mammals are relocated either for their protection or to ensure genetic diversity in breeding efforts. According to the researchers, nobody had ever checked to see if the health of a tranquilized rhino was compromised when being airlifted upside down.
An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran's onetime nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press show.
Pope Francis' yearslong process to reform the Catholic Church closed Saturday with recommendations that fell short of giving women more equity as hoped but reflected the pope's aims for a church that at least listens more to its followers.
Israel's pre-dawn airstrikes on military targets in Iran in retaliation for the barrage of ballistic missiles the Islamic republic fired on Israel earlier this month were met with mixed reactions both at home and abroad.
Thieves with a nose for fine cheese have pulled off a massive cheddar ripoff in London.
Israel launched its long-awaited retaliatory strikes on Iran early Saturday local time, the Israeli military said. Israel had vowed payback for Iran's Oct. 1 attack, during which the Islamic republic launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel.
A Northern Ireland man was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 20 years in prison after being found guilty by a U.K. court in what has been described as the biggest criminal "catfishing" case in the country. Alex McCartney, 26, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of manslaughter in a Northern Ireland court after a young American girl who was among the thousands of alleged victims he blackmailed online died by suicide.
London — There are almost 4,000 emojis to help people express themselves online, but a group of young design students in London says none of them feature Black or mixed-race hairstyles, and they're determined to change that.
Kazan, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday presided at the closing session of a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West's "perverse methods." The three-day summit in the city of Kazan covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.
Turkey launched airstrikes late Wednesday in Kurdish-held parts of Syria and Iraq in retaliation for a deadly attack at a state-owned defense manufacturer in Ankara that saw at least two attackers kill four people and wound more than a dozen others.
Sri Lanka deployed troops and increased police patrols around a Jewish community center in a popular surfing town on Wednesday after the U.S. embassy warned American citizens of a possible attack on popular tourist sites in the area.
Gisele Pelicot, the woman at the center of the mass-rape trial that's shocked her own country of France and the world, told her husband in court on Wednesday that she still "did not understand why" he had drugged and raped her for nearly a decade, along with dozens of other men he invited into their home.