Big Red

It’s not every day you see a big red squid alive on a beach in Carteret County. If it were, folks might be a bit alarmed. They are, uh, different-looking when they’re big. Maybe not the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” different. Weird enough, though.

But Winterville resident Carey Walker, who was driving down Portsmouth Island in late March, wasn’t alarmed, just curious, when he saw the unusual specimen. He picked it up, and like any good visitor to Core Banks, cared enough about marine life to put it back in the water, after getting a photo or two, of course.

He never saw the squid come back. But he has wondered what it was. And so have many others who’ve seen the photos.

“It was low tide, and we were coming back to the cabins at about 5:30 p.m., and I just saw this thing out of the corner of my eye down at the edge of the water,” Walker recalled. “I actually went past it. But I wanted to see what it was, so I backed the truck up and got out and saw that it was still alive. So I picked up and we got a couple of pictures, and then I put it back in the water.”

Walker and his companions were there for a few more days, and never saw the squid on the beach again. Nor did anyone else they talked to.

Kavachi

Scientists are using specially constructed underwater robots to study extremely rare sharks that live in one of the harshest environments on planet Earth - inside a submarine volcano.

The incredible sharks were discovered by chance as recently as 2015 in the violent Kavachi volcano in a remote part of the Solomon Islands.

Scientists observing volcanic activity spotted the sharks in the deep sea near the islands in the South Pacific. What first appeared to be an unidentifiable large brown blob was later revealed to be a Pacific sleeper shark. The sighting is the southernmost of the species ever documented.

At first researchers were baffled by what they’d found as they didn’t think anything other than bacteria could live in such extreme conditions.

Komodo

Komodo dragons, fearsome giant lizards found in Indonesia, may be a source of a potent antibiotic. If so, researchers say the agent could be an answer to the growing, global health problem of antibiotic resistance.

Huge, toothy and aggressive, Komodo dragons are surrounded by filth in their daily lives. As a result, Barney Bishop, a biochemist at George Mason University near Washington, said Komodo dragons have developed what he called a "robust" immune system.

Bishop studies molecules produced by the immune system as a front-line defense against infection. That, he said, is the reason for the interest in Komodos.

"They are known to eat carrion; they live in an unsanitary environment; they have been recorded to have up to 57 bacterial strains in their mouths," some of which can cause disease, he said. "Yet the reptiles themselves are not harmed by these bacteria, whether it's in their mouths or wounds inflicted by other lizards."

Stalker

A New York man was detained by the U.S. Secret Service last week for allegedly stalking and harassing former first daughter Malia Obama.

Jair Nilton Cardoso allegedly showed up at Malia Obama's internship in Tribeca and begged her to marry him, according to a new report from New York Daily News. Secret Service agents detained Cardoso, 30, after he stalked the 18-year-old at several locations around New York City.

Agents reportedly recognized him as a longtime stalker of the former first daughters, and revealed he had attempted to get into the White House in the past.

Dramatic

The establishment media is hiding the dramatic news that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has announced a national campaign to eradicate the imported practice of Female Genital Mutilation.

By ignoring the imported FGM practice, the TV networks “are guilty of aiding and abetting violence against women out of a politically correct fueled fear of offending Muslims,” says an April 18 statement by the Media Research Center and ACT for America. 

The federal government’s dramatic policy announcement was made April 13 when officials revealed they had charged a Muslim doctor for performing FGM on two American girls from Minnesota. The doctor and the two girls have immigrant parents from Muslim countries, where Islamic leaders endorse the peculiar institution to keep women subordinate to men. Officials also said they had found additional child victims in Michigan.

The Arsonists

Arson

Two Maryland women have been charged with a hate crime in connection with the burning of a Donald Trump presidential campaign sign, according to fire and police officials.
The State Fire Marshal’s Office said Monday that a second arrest was made in connection with the April 14 incident on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The office has identified the suspect as Joy M. Shuford, 19, of Owings Mills, Md.

Shuford surrendered to authorities one day after the incident and faces multiple charges including second-degree arson, malicious destruction of property and the commission of a hate crime.

The second suspect has been identified as D'Asia R. Perry, 19, of Baltimore. Perry was found on the University of Maryland Eastern Shore campus and taken into custody. She faces 14 charges in connection with the incident including arson and commission of a hate crime, according to police.

Tiger Stripes

According to NASA’s official press release, they made the discovery using the Cassini space probe which has been studying the icy surface of Saturn's moon. In Saturn’s sixth largest moon, Enceladus, Cassini spacecraft detected four “tiger stripes” near its south pole, which spews out water. The spacecraft found an abundance of hydrogen molecules in the water plumes. 

That's not all, the Cassini mission also found evidence for a subsurface ocean underneath the icy crust of the moon.