CBS News
Mama bear beats rival that killed her cub to win Fat Bear Contest: “First working mom to ever be crowned champion”
In a storyline better befitting a melodrama than a popularity vote, Grazer won her second Fat Bear Contest Tuesday by defeating the male behemoth that killed her cub this summer.
Grazer beat Chunk by more than 40,000 votes cast by fans watching live cameras of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.
Fans cast votes online for their favorite chunky competitor in tournament-style brackets that begins with 12 bears. They picked the bear they believe best exemplifies winter preparedness by the fat they have accumulated over the summer feeding on the sockeye salmon that return to Brooks River.
In a social media post, the competition congratulated Grazer for being the “first working mom to ever be crowned champion.”
The bears often perch at the top of a falls in the river, grabbing leaping salmon out of the air as the fish attempt to hurdle the waterfall to spawn upstream.
This is where Grazer’s cub died after it slipped over the waterfall and was killed by Chunk, perhaps the most dominant brown bear on the river. Grazer fought Chunk in an effort to save the cub, but it later died. The death was captured on the live cameras.
Another death was captured live by the cameras just last week, delaying the release of the tournament bracket for a day. Bear 402, a female bear that was supposed to be a contestant in this year’s contest, was killed by a male brown bear the day the brackets were expected to be released.
“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” the National Park Service’s Matt Johnson said in a statement to CBS News after Bear 402 was killed. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”
Grazer has conspicuously blond ears and a long, straight muzzle, according to her bio page at explore.org. “She is a formidable presence on Brooks River. Her fearlessness and strength have earned her respect, with most bears avoiding confrontation,” it says.
Her other surviving cub from her third litter placed second two weeks ago in the Fat Bear Junior contest.
Chunk is perhaps the largest bear on the river, with narrow-set eyes, dark brown fur and a distinctive scar across his muzzle, his bio says. He used his size to rise to the top of the river hierarchy this year and secured the prime fishing spots.
“Chunk’s confidence and aggression paid off, allowing him to feast on 42 salmon in 10 hours,” it says. “His physical success is evident in his bulky form.”
Still, it was not enough to top Grazer. According to the Fat Bear website, Grazer earned 71,248 votes, easily defeating Chunk who received 30,468 votes.
Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds in mid-summer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon – each eats as many as 30 fish per day – large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds. Females are about one-third smaller.
The annual contest, which drew more than 1.3 million votes last year, is a way to celebrate the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands.
In addition to the live cameras, Katmai has become a bucket list tourist destination and viewing stands have been built on the river to allow people to watch the brown bears fish for salmon.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, with the Nobel committee lauding the “grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki” for its work to “achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The 2024 Peace Prize was awarded against a backdrop of devastating conflicts raging in the world, notably in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan.
Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the prize should be awarded for “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Since 1901, 104 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded, mostly to individuals but also to organizations that have been seen to advance peace efforts.
Last year’s prize went to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her advocacy of women’s rights and democracy, and against the death penalty. The Nobel committee said it also was a recognition of “the hundreds of thousands of people” who demonstrated against “Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”
In the Middle East, persistently spiraling levels of violence over the past year have killed tens of thousands of people, including thousands of children and women. The war, sparked by a bloody raid into Israel by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 that left about 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, has spilled out into the wider region.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half are women and children. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed, with thousands more injured and around 1 million displaced since mid-September, when the Israeli military dramatically expanded its offensive against Hezbollah.
The war in Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s invasion, is heading toward its third winter with a staggering loss of human life on both sides.
The U.N. has confirmed more than 11,000 Ukrainian civilian dead, but that doesn’t take into account as many as 25,000 Ukrainians believed to have died during the Russian capture of the city of Mariupol or unreported deaths in the occupied territories.
Western officials have estimated Russian military casualties around 600,000, with perhaps 150,000 dead, and public reports put Russian civilian dead around 150, mostly in the border region of Belgorod.
Ukrainian military deaths were last announced in February at 31,000 and the president has said there are six wounded for every soldier killed.
On the African continent, Sudan has been devastated by a 17-month war that that has so far killed more than 20,000 peopleand forced more than 8 million people from their homes, while roughly another 2 million were already displaced within the country before hostilities broke out.
The Nobel prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.
The Nobel season ends Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
CBS News
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.
PITTSBURGH, Pa. (KDKA) — The northern lights are expected to be visible again throughout parts of the United States on Friday night.Â
When the northern lights, or the aurora borealis, are visible, the best way to see them is to find a dark spot away from bright lights, allow time to enable your eyes adjust to the darkness and look toward the north. Â
The northern lights show up best in photos.
Here’s how to use night mode on your phone’s camera to try to capture photos of the colorful auroras. Â Â
How do I turn on night mode on an iPhone?Â
If you are using an iPhone, Apple says the default settings will have night mode turn on automatically “when the camera detects a low-light environment.”
When night mode is active, an icon will turn yellow in the top left corner of your screen.
A number will show up next to that icon showing you how long it will take for the photo to take.Â
You can adjust how long the exposure will last by tapping the arrow that shows up above the viewfinder.
How do I turn on night mode on an Android phone?Â
Starting night mode on an Android device will depend on the type of device you have.Â
On a Samsung Galaxy device, a yellow moon icon will pop up in the bottom right of your screen. On a Pixel device, you can tap Night Light, then tap Capture and hold your phone still for a few seconds. In the Google Camera app, you can turn Night mode on by tapping settings and turning the mode on or off.Â
Will the northern lights be visible where I live?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued its “Aurora Forecast” for Friday with numerous parts of the United States in the range of potentially being able to see the bright auroras of the northern lights.Â
Space Weather Prediction Center
The map of the aurora forecast shows that northern parts of the country have a better chance of seeing the auroras.Â
A view line that shows “the southern extent of where aurora might be seen on the northern horizon” stretches from Washington, D.C. across the Midwest and through Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York.Â
The northern lights were on display on Thursday nightÂ
The northern lights were visible all throughout the country on Thursday night.
Mario Carrasco
Photos of the northern lights were captured in places like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.Â
The colorful auroras had green, purple, red and pink hues scattered throughout the skies.Â
What causes the northern lights?Â
When a geomagnetic storm occurs, solar wind is sent toward Earth.Â
Charged protons and electrons follow Earth’s magnetic field and enter the atmosphere where the magnetic fields are the weakest: the poles.Â
The electrons smash into all the different molecules that make up our atmosphere, creating a dazzling display of colors in the sky.
Deer Park, Texas — At least two workers at a Houston-area oil refinery were killed Thursday when hydrogen sulfide leaked at the plant, setting off urgent warnings for nearby residents to stay indoors before authorities later determined that the public wasn’t in danger.
Nearly three dozen other people were either transported to hospitals or treated at the scene, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Hours after the leak began, Gonzalez said the area was still unsafe for investigators to enter and that officials may not be able to get inside until Friday.
The plant is operated by Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company, and located in the suburb of Deer Park.
Adrees Latif / REUTERS
Gonzalez said the gas release happened during work on a flange at the facility, which is part of a cluster of oil refineries and plants that makes Houston the nation’s petrochemical heartland.
Pemex said in a statement that investigations were underway and that operations had been “proactively halted” at two units with the aim of mitigating the impact.
Local officials issued a shelter-in-place order but lifted it hours later after air monitoring showed no risk to the surrounding community, Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton said.
The chief meteorologist at CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV, David Paul, said the wind was calm Thursday night.
Hydrogen sulfide is a foul-smelling gas that can be toxic at high levels.
“Other than the smell, we have not had any verifiable air monitoring to support that anything got outside the facility,” Mouton said.
Television news crews showed multiple ambulances and emergency vehicles at the scene. Gonzalez had originally posted on the social platform X that one person was transported to a hospital by helicopter, but officials later said at a news conference that no one was airlifted.
The leak caused the second shelter-in-place orders in Deer Park in the span of weeks. Last month, a pipeline fire that burned for four days forced surrounding neighborhoods to evacuate.
2024 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese group for anti-nuclear weapons work
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.
At least 2 killed, several injured when Texas Pemex plant leaks hydrogen sulfide
2024 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese group for anti-nuclear weapons work
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.