CBS News
U.S. Navy sailor detained in Venezuela, officials say
An American Navy sailor has been detained in Venezuela while visiting the country on personal travel, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
It’s not yet known why the sailor is being detained.
The U.S. State Department has issued a travel warning against visiting Venezuela, urging Americans to “reconsider travel due to wrongful detentions, terrorism, and poor health infrastructure.”
The detention was first reported by CNN.
CBS News
Sean “Diddy” Combs denied bail again in federal sex trafficking case
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
CBS News
“Beyond the Gates” cast announced: Tamara Tunie, Daphnee Duplaix, Karla Mosley star in Black-led CBS daytime drama
CBS has announced the first cast members for “Beyond the Gates,” which will become the first one-hour Black daytime soap to air on TV when it premieres early next year.
The show, set in an affluent Maryland suburb, centers around the Duprees, a prominent, multigenerational family. Tamara Tunie, Daphnee Duplaix and Karla Mosley have been cast as three key members of the Dupree family: the family matriarch and her two daughters.
Tunie will star as Anita Dupree, a famous singer who raised two daughters with her husband, a former senator. Tunie starred as attorney Jessica Griffin on “As the World Turns” and as Dr. Melinda Warner on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Duplaix will play the role of Dr. Nicole Dupree Richardson, Anita’s psychiatrist daughter whose life appears perfect from the outside. Duplaix is best known for her role on “One Life to Live” as Rachel Gannon, which earned her an NAACP Award nomination.
Mosley will portray Anita’s other daughter, Dani Dupree, an ex-model-turned-momager. Mosley was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for her role as Maya Avant Forrester on “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
“Beyond the Gates” will be the first new daytime drama to debut since “Passions” premiered in 1999.
CBS News
300 sea corals brought from Florida to Texas as part of effort to save the species
Dania Beach, Fla. — Scientists have moved about about 300 endangered sea corals from South Florida to the Texas Gulf Coast for research and restoration.
Nova Southeastern University and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi researchers packed up the corals Wednesday at the NSU’s Oceanographic Campus in Dania Beach. The sea creatures were then loaded onto a van, taken to a nearby airport and flown to Texas.
Researchers were taking extreme caution with the transfer of these delicate corals, NSU researcher Shane Wever said.
“The process that we’re undertaking today is a really great opportunity for us to expand the representation of the corals that we are working with and the locations where they’re stored,” Wever said. “Increasing the locations that they’re stored really acts as safeguards for us to protect them and to preserve them for the future.”
Each coral was packaged with fresh clean sea water and extra oxygen, inside a protective case and inside insulated and padded coolers and was in transport for the shortest time possible.
NSU’s marine science research facility serves as a coral reef nursery, where rescued corals are stored, processed for restoration and transplanted back into the ocean. The school has shared corals with other universities, like the University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University and Texas State University, as well as the Coral Restoration Foundation in the Florida Keys.
Despite the importance of corals, it’s easy for people living on land to forget how important things in the ocean are, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi researcher Keisha Bahr said.
“Corals serve a lot of different purposes,” Bahr said. “First of all, they protect our coastlines, especially here in Florida, from wave energy and coastal erosion. They also supply us with a lot of the food that we get from our oceans. And they are nurseries for a lot of the organisms that come from the sea.”
Abnormally high ocean temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching in 2023, wiping out corals in the Florida Keys. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi turned to NSU when its partners in the Keys were no longer able to provide corals for its research. Broward County was spared from the majority of the 2023 bleaching so the NSU offshore coral nursery had healthy corals to donate.
“We’re losing corals at an alarming rate,” Bahr said. “We lost about half of our corals in last three decades. So we need to make sure that we continue to have these girls into the future.”
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is using some of these corals to study the effects of sediment from Port Everglades on coral health. The rest will either help the university with its work creating a bleaching guide for the Caribbean or act as a genetic bank, representing nearly 100 genetically distinct Staghorn coral colonies from across South Florida’s reefs.
“We wanted to give them as many genotypes, which are genetic individuals, as we could to really act as a safeguard for these this super important species,” Wever said.