Stock photo of a sea turtle. Credit: inhauscreative / Getty Images
Residents, some of whom lack heat or basic amenities in their own homes due to the unusually chilly weather, have been rescuing cold-stunned sea turtles and taking them to a convention center in a South Texas resort town.
“Every 15 minutes or less there’s another truck or SUV that pulls up," Ed Caum, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
He said sometimes people bring one or two sea turtles, sometimes more. “We had trailers full yesterday coming in that had 80, 100, 50,” he said.
The South Padre Island Convention Center started pitching in Monday when its neighbor, Sea Turtle Inc., could no longer handle the number of sea turtles being dropped off, and their mostly outdoor operation had lost power. He said the convention center itself didn't have power or water till early Wednesday morning.
He says they've “collected” more than 3,500 sea turtles so far. He said he hesitates to use the word rescued because “we know we're going to lose some.”
Temperatures in the area on Wednesday afternoon were in the 40s. He said it may be Saturday — when temperatures are expected to reach the low 60s (above 15 Celsius) — before the turtles can be released back into the Gulf.
He said with power returned they have been able to bring the convention center's temperature to 60 degrees.
“We’re trying to do the best we can to save as many turtles as possible,” he said.
The chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway has admitted he beat the young Alabama woman to death on a beach in Aruba after she refused his advances. New details in the killing emerged Wednesday as Joran Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway's mother, resolving a case that has captivated the public’s attention for nearly 20 years.
The trial of a Fugees rapper, who was convicted this year in multimillion-dollar political conspiracies, stretched across the worlds of politics and entertainment — and now the case is touching on the tech world with arguments that his defense attorney bungled the case, in part, by using an artificial intelligence program to write his closing arguments.
Israel said Wednesday that it will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the first crack in a 10-day siege on the territory. Palestinians reeled from a massive blast at a Gaza City hospital that killed hundreds the day before and grew increasingly desperate as food and water supplies ran out.
A 4000-year-old slab of rock is being dubbed a treasure map for archaeologists. The rock was found in 1900 at the site of an ancient tomb in northwestern France and it was declared Europe's oldest known map in 2021.
Hundreds of people gathered for a vigil honoring a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy who was stabbed to death over the weekend by his family's landlord in an apparent hate crime.
