A forlorn cow nuzzles the soil in search of a blade of grass that isn’t there. In better times Andur was the “boss cow” in a herd of 70. She always enjoyed the best pasture, was first to drink from the water trough, and where she led the others followed. By the look of her clearly articulated ribcage, Andur will soon be the one doing the following to where the rest of the herd lie dead on the edge of the village of Funan-Qumbi in Marsabit County.

Cattle-herding tribes of northern Kenya have been waiting four years for the sustained rainfall that they need to survive, but for most of their livestock it is too late. In Marsabit County, 80 per cent of the cattle have died.

Drought is nothing new in this semi-arid region near the Ethiopian border and the pastoralists are resourceful, but even the most wizened tribal elder says that they have never seen anything like this. In the scattered villages dotted about the remote 67,000sq m region where some half a million people live, hawks pick on the animals’ carcasses. It’s a gruesome visual reminder of the climate disaster that has caused the death of 11 million heads of livestock in Kenya and left more than 23 million people in northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia at risk of starvation, according to the UN World Food Programme. Some of the elderly in the far-flung villages are already dying of hunger, but their deaths are not being reported because of the shame.

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In Kenya, drought is wiping out livestock and children are dying from lack of food. It is a natural disaster made worse by rising global food prices. The region is bracing itself for heartbreak — within weeks https://t.co/49lRKmxEfi

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) March 18, 2023

It wouldn’t be completely out of character for Joe Rogan, the comedian turned podcaster, to endorse a “libido-boosting” coffee brand for men.

But when a video circulating on TikTok recently showed Mr. Rogan and his guest, Andrew Huberman, hawking the coffee, some eagle-eyed viewers were shocked — including Dr. Huberman.

“Yep that’s fake,” Dr. Huberman wrote on Twitter after seeing the ad, in which he appears to praise the coffee’s testosterone-boosting potential, even though he never did.

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Making deepfakes once required elaborate software. But now there is a growing number of "cheapfakes" — convincing fake videos easily made by meme-makers and misinformation peddlers who are embracing AI. https://t.co/H2h42mr4IY

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 12, 2023

Parishes across England and Wales can now register to participate in Churches Count on Nature, an annual scheme where people visit churchyards and record the plant and animal species they encounter.

An adult and child taking part in the Churches Count on Nature, using a magnifying glass to look at wildlifeCaring for God’s Acre
The biodiversity survey, supported by environmental charities A Rocha UK and Caring for God’s Acre, as well as the Church of England and the Church in Wales, will take place from June 3 to 11, 2023.

In the last two years, 900 counting events took place across churches in England and Wales, and over 27,000 wildlife records were submitted to Caring for God’s Acre. Churches across all denominations take part in the count each year.

The data will be used to determine where rare and endangered species are located in the country and to aid churches of all denominations to increase biodiversity on their land for the enrichment of the environment and local communities. This year, species on some of the 17,500 acres of churchyards in England alone will be mapped, with a further 1,282 acres of churchyards in Wales.

As graveyards and church land are usually undisturbed and not used for farming, they can be host to a great variety of wildlife not seen in other green spaces, particularly in urban areas. Old churchyards often have fantastic flowery and species-rich grasslands as they have been so little disturbed over the centuries.

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Parishes across England and Wales can now register to participate in Churches Count on Nature. 🌳

Read more at https://t.co/wrywVybO6C.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) March 8, 2023

Here is the NBC blurb–‘Colorado hiker Ruth Woroniecki plunged 200 feet in California’s San Gabriel Mountains and had to hike with a broken neck to reach the rescue helicopter. NBC News’ Steve Patterson has more details on the extraordinary story.’

Watch it all and note the faith reference at the end.

New technological tools often enable fresh scientific discoveries. Take the case of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the 17th-century Dutch amateur scientist and pioneer microscopist, who built at least 25 single-lens microscopes with which he studied fleas, weevils, red blood cells, bacteria and his own spermatozoa, among other things.

In hundreds of letters to the Royal Society and other scientific institutions, van Leeuwenhoek meticulously recorded his observations and discoveries, not always for a receptive readership. But he has since been recognised as the father of microbiology, having helped us understand and fight all manner of diseases.

Centuries later, new technological tools are enabling a global community of biologists and amateur scientists to explore the natural world of sound in richer detail and at greater scale than ever before. Just as microscopes helped humans observe things not visible to the naked eye, so ubiquitous microphones and machine learning models enable us to listen to sounds we cannot otherwise hear. We can eavesdrop on an astonishing soundscape of planetary “conversations” among bats, whales, honey bees, elephants, plants and coral reefs. “Sonics is the new optics,” Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, tells me.

Billions of dollars are pouring into so-called generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with scores of start-ups being launched to commercialise these foundation models. But in one sense, generative AI is something of a misnomer: these models are mostly used to rehash existing human knowledge in novel combinations rather than to generate anything genuinely new.

What may have a bigger scientific and societal impact is “additive AI”, using machine learning to explore specific, newly created data sets — derived, for example, from satellite imagery, genome sequencing, quantum sensing or bio-acoustic recordings — and extend the frontiers of human knowledge. When it comes to sonic data, Bakker even raises the tantalising possibility over the next two decades of interspecies communication as humans use machines to translate and replicate animal sounds, creating a kind of Google Translate for the zoo. “We do not yet possess a dictionary of Sperm Whalish, but we now have the raw ingredients to create one,” Bakker writes in her book The Sounds of Life.

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A sonic revolution triggered by advances in hardware and software lets us eavesdrop on planetary conversations #artificalintelligence

Google Translate for the zoo? How humans might talk to animals https://t.co/jNzwbgcK8a

— Leo Cremonezi (@leocremonezi) January 19, 2023

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(CBC) 13 pictures of #Epiphany2023 celebrations around the world https://t.co/ndXTh1Rjh3 #epiphany #photos #christianity #globalisation

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 6, 2023

Look through them all.

In pictures: World celebrates #Christmas.https://t.co/fLJjhtQQcH

— High Days, Holidays & Holy Days (@DaysHolidays) December 25, 2022

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When the water slipped in, it was just a glimmer on the floor, a sign that it was time to go.

It was Wednesday, around noon, and Darcy Bishop roused her two brothers who had been resting after lunch. She pulled the wheelchair up to the oldest, Russell Rochow, 66, and heaved him into it before slipping his feet into black Velcro shoes.

Her other brother, Todd Rochow, 63, was in his room, changing out of pajamas. He could manage with a walker.

Both men had been born with cerebral palsy, and their mental development was like that of a young child. About 10 years ago, they started showing signs of Parkinson’s disease. But they found joy in their surroundings. Todd liked collecting cans at the beach and waiting for the mail carrier. Russell loved riding the bus and going to parks. And both had girlfriends. Ms. Bishop, 61, was their lifeline, their little sister who had long felt an obligation to keep them safe.

“We’ve got to get going!” she shouted to Todd. She went to open the door of their home in Naples, Fla. It would not budge. The weight of the water on the other side had cemented it shut.

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As Hurricane Ian’s floodwaters rapidly rose in Naples, Florida, Darcy Bishop fought to save her disabled brothers.

This is her story. https://t.co/0Y5pbB4iHk

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 2, 2022

Watch the whole very encouraging piece.

Josh arrived at Oxford in 2012 to study history, Jack in 2013 for English. Once there, Jack devoted himself to comedy. The first time Josh saw him on stage, he couldn’t get over Jack’s brilliance. After the show, he went over and said: “You should do a sequel of that, but with me in it, too.” Jack was quick and witty. But he was also more honest than other people Josh had met at university. No one else talked about how punishing it was. Likewise, Jack admired how straightforwardly, unapologetically himself Josh seemed. In each other they both discovered qualities they could not see were also in themselves: someone grounded and earnest, who reminded them of home.

Jack is taller, more angular than Josh. The first time Josh saw a Rembrandt self-portrait, he thought: at last, people who look like me getting some representation in art. He has soft features, a stooped posture and droopy eyes that suggest a melancholic disposition. This impression falls away as soon as he speaks. When together, Josh is the more animated of the pair. At any hint of a joke from Jack (and when I interviewed them as a pair, there were many of these – I, the waiter, any passers-by becoming audience while they tried out accents and characters), he throws his head back and slaps his knees appreciatively. Jack is more sensitive and self-critical. He sometimes disappears into himself without warning. We spoke every few months between 2021 and 2022. The deepening of his commitment to Christianity during this period meant that on each occasion we talked, the version of himself from our last meeting had already become an object of some disdain.

There are two distinct routes to faith among those who don’t grow up Christian. The first is person-led. One priest I spoke to followed a girl he fancied into a church. He walked in an atheist and came out a believer. The process isn’t always so quick, of course. One devout Christian, named Chris, told me that it had started on his gap year when he met a Pentecostal Christian in Huddersfield. Every day the two spoke about faith. At the end of the year, Chris went to visit his new friend’s church. There the friend spoke to him through the Holy Spirit. In that heightened state, he told Chris truths about himself no one else knew. After that, Chris could think of no further reason not to become a Christian.

Others arrive at church after trauma.

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Feels very rare to get a long read on something like this. And brave of the two subjects to open up to this extent, describing what it feels like to become a Christian… https://t.co/MzSH3tBL5W

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) September 22, 2022

After Brandon, a teacher, learned that his new niece was delivered stillborn, his entire school was informed of the loss. None of his students talked to him the next day — except for one young student named Marissa

Take the time to listen to it all.

After teacher Brandon Martell learned that his new niece was delivered stillborn, his entire school was informed of the loss. None of his students talked to him the next day — except for one young student named Marissa.https://t.co/GWIdYnxDTT

— Hidden Brain (@HiddenBrain) September 7, 2022

Kenya’s Wildlife and Tourism ministry says that climate change is now a bigger threat to elephant conservation than poaching.

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Climate change killing elephants, says Kenya https://t.co/ncUhsuRzxb

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 28, 2022

“Fit works on a Florida farm where she supervises sheep. The pup was awarded the Farm Dog of the Year title for her hustle and dogged determination.”

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She strayed from a path and fell into the thicket. The search began the next day and security camera video showed Noppe and her dog on a road on the edge of the woods. The following afternoon the search was suspended because of a storm, though volunteers kept looking for her in the rain.

Noppe’s daughter Courtney said a team of tracking dogs had picked up a scent and a helicopter had been sent to try to spot her. At about 3am on May 6, the party turned off their all-terrain vehicles and heard a fateful bark.

“They just went to him and that’s how they found her,” she said.

Her family said that she was not seriously injured. “That dog has no leash, no collar, and stayed by her side for . . . three days,” her son Justin said. “That just shows you the loyalty that that dog has. He was never going to leave her side.”

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Constable Ted Heap, of the Harris County sheriff’s office, said: “It is a small miracle that she’s alive after being missing for so long” https://t.co/mXhccHtpOo

— The Times (@thetimes) May 13, 2022

For a human, one of the first signs someone is getting old is the inability to remember little things; maybe they misplace their keys, or get lost on an oft-taken route. For a laboratory mouse, it’s forgetting that when bright lights and a high-pitched buzz flood your cage, an electric zap to the foot quickly follows.

But researchers at Stanford University discovered that if you transfuse cerebrospinal fluid from a young mouse into an old one, it will recover its former powers of recall and freeze in anticipation. They also identified a protein in that cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, that penetrates into the hippocampus, where it drives improvements in memory.

The tantalizing breakthrough, published Wednesday in Nature, suggests that youthful factors circulating in the CSF, or drugs that target the same pathways, might be tapped to slow the cognitive declines of old age. Perhaps even more importantly, it shows for the first time the potential of CSF as a vehicle to get therapeutics for neurological diseases into the hard-to-reach fissures of the human brain.

“This is the first study that demonstrates real improvement in cognitive function with CSF infusion, and so that’s what makes it a real milestone,” said Maria Lehtinen, a neurologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new research. “The super-exciting direction here is that it lends support to the idea that we can harness the CSF as a therapeutic avenue for a broad range of conditions.”

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Stanford researchers discovered that if you transfuse brain fluid from a young mouse into an old one, it will recover its former powers of recall. https://t.co/CDlmZeH7Gt

— STAT (@statnews) May 11, 2022

Along the way we meet all manner of puzzle masters, as well as the merely possessed. There are the speedcubers, people who memorize hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of algorithms to reduce the number of turns per solve. (If you think that nothing is more boring to watch than golf, just know that speedcubing tournaments have spectators, as well as fantasy leagues where you can gamble on your favorite champions.) There is Adrian Fisher, who modestly calls himself the most prolific maze designer “in the history of humankind”: His work includes a Beatles-themed maze in Liverpool, a maze in the passenger terminal of Singapore’s Changi Airport and one on the side of a building in Dubai, “which shouldn’t be attempted unless you’re Spider-Man.” And of course there is Will Shortz himself, the NPR/New York Times editor who is to puzzles what Kim Kardashian is to buttocks: There is none finer, or more discussed among aficionados. On the walls of Shortz’s living room hangs a personal letter to him from Bill Clinton: “Even when I can’t finish them, they’re the only part of The New York Times that guarantees a good feeling.”

Jacobs’s love for puzzles is infectious, and it’s not hard to understand why. Puzzle people draw us in with their monomania. “I’m a sucker for people who are passionate about something,” Jacobs notes, “regardless of how silly that passion might seem to others.” He shows us how you can even cherish puzzles that you don’t have the patience (or skill) to solve.

The truth is, we’re all puzzlers, whether we’re trying to remember our passwords or losing sleep because we’re staying up till 12:01 a.m. to do Wordle — a simple word puzzle that ballooned from 90 daily players on Nov. 1 to 300,000 at the beginning of the year to millions now. All puzzles aren’t so innocent — think Zodiac Killer, who still has multiple websites dedicated to cracking some of his unsolved notes. But puzzles also bring us together in ways large and small. If I’m having an existential crisis at 3 a.m., there is an entire globe of people out there playing online Scrabble in real time. And I’ve actually had interesting conversations on Words With Friends with strangers. As puzzlers often say, “It’s not the puzzles you solve, it’s the people you meet.”

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What’s a Six-Letter Word for Fanatical Devotion to Solving Things? https://t.co/enX8LSUvnA

— Paul Quibell-smith (@QuibellPaul) April 26, 2022

There are 25 in all.

In pictures: Easter celebrations around the world https://t.co/pCd0szwbyV pic.twitter.com/HLn2uO7xv0

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) April 18, 2022

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In pictures: Good Friday around the world https://t.co/AD9uDyUGUE

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 16, 2022

For the past 30 years St Mary’s in Ticehurst, East Sussex, has invited the small flock – made up of six ewes and their lambs – into the churchyard for part of the year to increase biodiversity.

Penny Evans, a licensed lay reader at the parish, explained: “We now have Wiltshire Horns in the churchyard, which works very well with our churchyard conservation project.

“Wiltshire Horns do not need shearing, and so there is plenty of wool available for the birds’ nests.

“Birds even fill their boxes with cosy sheep wool. They also do an excellent job of looking after the grass in the churchyard.”

In fact, the sheep helped the church gain a Gold Eco Award from the environment charity A Rocha UK. It is only the 24th church to achieve the award.

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Here's more on the story of St Mary's Ticehurst, which was just received its Gold #EcoChurch award. @ARochaUK
There's more than one flock being cared for at St Mary's! https://t.co/G8qQZAFSnn

— Church of England Environment Programme (@CofEEnvironment) February 15, 2022

Take the time to listen to it all. It is simple but inspiring.

‘A Long Island woman received a scam call that her grandson was in a drunken car crash. She notified the police, who helped tackle the fraudster when he showed up demanding money.’ Watch it all.