KALBA: The hawksbill sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, its shell ashen and stomach taut.
A week ago, the adolescent turtle washed up on a beach in Kalba, a city on the east coast of the UAE.
Once unspoiled, the coast of mangrove trees is now fouled by piles of trash dragged from nearby landfills. Strewn across the shore are plastic bags, packages, bottle caps — and far too often, dead turtles.
At first, Fadi Yaghmour, a marine expert who has examined some 200 turtles for the first research on the subject from the Middle East, extracted typical fare from the carcass — squid beaks and oysters.
Then, a culprit for the creature’s demise became clear: Shriveled balloons and plastic foam, some of the last things the turtle ate.
“It’s probably malnourished,” Yaghmour said as he worked. Plastic clogs turtles’ intestinal tracts, he said, and can cause them to starve.
This turtle is one of 64 retrieved from the shores of Kalba and Khor Fakkan, in Sharjah, to be analyzed in Yaghmour’s lab. His team of researchers has published a new study in the Marine Pollution Bulletin that seeks to document the damage and danger of the throwaway plastic that has surged in use around the world and in the UAE, along with other marine debris. When discarded, plastic clogs waterways and chokes animals — not just sea turtles but whales, birds and all sorts of life.
A staggering 75 percent of all dead green turtles and 57 percent of all loggerhead turtles in Sharjah had eaten marine debris, including plastic bags, bottle caps, rope and fishing nets, the study found. The only other research from the region, published in 1985, found that none of the studied turtles in the Gulf of Oman had eaten plastic.
Turtles dying from eating trash show plastics scourge
https://arab.news/jdb9e
Turtles dying from eating trash show plastics scourge
- This turtle is one of 64 retrieved from the shores of Kalba and Khor Fakkan, in Sharjah, to be analyzed in Yaghmour’s lab
Oracle says data center outage causing issues faced by US TikTok users
WASHINGTON: Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by US users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the US over the weekend.
“The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure US data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors — cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX — will hold a stake of 15 percent. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1 percent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 percent.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner” but noted that US users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
