Jacksonville

Bara timmar innan Miamis NFL-premiär stoppades storstjärnan Tyreek Hill av polis och handfängslades liggande på gatan. Hill släpptes på platsen och svarade sedan för en touchdown när det blev seger mot Jacksonville.

Den 15 augusti förra året drogs siffrorna som gjorde en lottospelare i Jacksonville, Florida, till mångmiljonär. Den 11 februari gick alla pengarna förlorade. Vinnaren missade deadline att hämta ut sin vinst.

Klonade husdjur erbjuder en kontroversiell väg att hantera sorgen över att förlora en älskad följeslagare. Tekniken har blivit tillgänglig för allmänheten i USA relativt nyligen och lockar husdjursägare som söker tröst en möjlighet att ”lura döden”. Många hoppas att deras klonade husdjur kommer att vara en identisk ersättning för det förlorade, vilket gör kloning till en kostsam, men lockande lösning. The Atlantics reporter har pratat med flera djurägare som har valt att klona. Även om åsikterna varierar tycks den allmänna uppfattningen vara att det är svårt att få samma band som man hade med det ursprungliga husdjuret. You can replicate an animal’s DNA, but you can’t re-create its relationship with a human. By Chiara Dello Joio 26 october, 2023 I met Princess Ariel and Princess Jasmine on a sunny afternoon at a park in Garden City, New York. The two dogs—both creamy-colored shih tzu mutts with spots on their backs—were lying next to each other on the grass, front legs extended, tongues hanging out. Every so often, they’d both look off to the side at the same moment—then turn their heads back again simultaneously. When two excited little girls came over to pet them, the dogs’ owner—John Mendola, a retired police officer—made pleasant small talk with the girls’ parents. Eventually, though, he shared something that made them raise their eyebrows in surprise: The dogs were not only twins but twin clones, spawned from the DNA of his late dog, Princess. In 2016, right before Princess died, Mendola had ordered a genetic-preservation kit from ViaGen—a pet-cloning facility based in Cedar Park, Texas—and sent off a sample of her skin to its lab. The company, which opened in 2015, clones dogs and cats for $50,000 and horses for $85,000. Mendola spent several years saving (and sold his car) to afford it, but now here he is with two new versions of his beloved pup. At least, that’s one way to think of it. A cloned pet is easy enough to define physically: It’s a genetically identical animal, like a twin born on a different date. But its meaning is harder to pinpoint. Is it a continuation of the original pet? An homage to the old one, like a living gravestone? A unique animal that might share some of its predecessor’s best qualities? I talked with several pet-clone owners to find out what they’d wanted—and whether they’d gotten it. For many people, it seems, a clone is essentially an attempt to cheat death, to somehow mitigate the pain of losing a companion. But grief isn’t easily evaded. The first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, was born in 1996—but cloning technology has become publicly available to pet owners only more recently. ViaGen, the U.S.’s most popular facility, started cloning livestock and horses in 2002, then expanded to dogs and cats in 2015; since then, it’s cloned close to 1,000 pets, and its customer count is rising. The process (formally known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer”), requires a pet’s tissue sample to be cultured to produce millions of cells, the nucleus of a donor egg to be removed and replaced with one of those cells, and the embryo to be implanted into a surrogate animal, which will give birth to an identical twin of the original pet. Because surrogates are implanted with several embryos, there’s about a 30 percent chance that multiple clones—like Princess Ariel and Princess Jasmine—will be born (though owners can take them all home for the same price). Pet cloning is ethically fraught. Surrogate animals, for example, have to endure surgery when the embryo is implanted, and sometimes need a cesarean section or experience stillbirths as well. Snuppy, the first cloned dog, born in 2005, was the result of more than 1,000 embryos implanted into 123 surrogate dogs, resulting in three pregnancies that ultimately yielded just one healthy puppy. In 2008, 20 dogs had to be implanted to create one clone of a toy poodle. Surrogates are leased from a breeder; Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen’s client-service manager, told me that all of the company’s customers used to have the option of adopting their clone’s surrogate, but after too many clients complained that their cloned dogs were bonded more tightly with their surrogate than with them, ViaGen stopped offering canine clients the option. Ethicists and animal-welfare activists have argued, too, that cloning is particularly pernicious when millions of animals are languishing in shelters. And yet, cloning—essentially a very expensive bereavement-coping tool—can be tempting for owners who don’t feel ready to let go of their pet. In a promotional video on ViaGen’s site, Rodriguez claims that clients “don’t ever have to know what it’s like to have them gone.” And plenty of customers take that promise quite seriously: They don’t just want a new pet that reminds them of their previous one. Rodriguez told me that “a lot of our clients will go into it hoping that it’s the same pet all over again.” There’s no guarantee, though, that a cloned pet’s personality will be the same as the original’s. As with human identical twins, the two virtually always look similar. But the clone will also experience its own unique conditions—maybe a new home, or different family members or other pets around, or even just a different diet. Those factors can shape the individual it becomes. In fact, Brock Bastian, a psychology professor at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, who studies ethical decision making, told me he wonders whether people might be better off saving $50,000 and just buying the same breed again. Rodriguez said that clients are warned not to expect a reincarnation. Still, they’re likely to keep comparing their new and old pets, forever on the lookout for similarities and departures. Unsurprisingly for some owners, the attachment they’d had to their initial pet is impossible to re-create. Kelly Anderson, a dog trainer in Austin, Texas, told me that her late ragdoll cat, Chai, first came home with a lot of diseases, so Anderson spent months nursing her back to health, which she felt strengthened their tie. Chai was not a particularly affectionate cat, but in moments when Anderson was depressed, she said Chai would snuggle up to her, somehow seeming to sense her turmoil. She believes that Chai saved her life on numerous occasions. When Chai died unexpectedly at 5 years old, Anderson decided to clone her and named the new kitten Belle. Belle looks just like Chai—long-haired white fur and bright-blue eyes—but her demeanor is entirely different. Though Chai was always reserved, Belle is outgoing; whereas Anderson nurtured Chai through near-fatal illness, Belle has always been perfectly healthy. Anderson loves Belle enormously and doesn’t regret her choice to clone. But she’d forged a bond with Chai based on very specific experiences: coaxing her out from under the bed when she was scared, gently getting her to swallow her medicine, gaining her trust. With Belle, Anderson told me, she doesn’t feel the same connection. She doesn’t just miss the combination of DNA that was Chai; she misses their relationship, which was built on unreplicable memories and experiences. Other owners feel like their clone is so similar to their original pet that they hardly need to start over at all. West Westmoreland, who owns a construction company in Jacksonville, Florida, told me that Peanut II, his cloned miniature dachshund, is essentially a perfect continuation of his predecessor, Peanut. Peanut I had been deeply attached to Westmoreland, who’s quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair, and had quickly become his service dog—spending most of her time in his lap and accompanying him to his doctor appointments. When she died after 13 years, Westmoreland was devastated. Several months later, when he brought Peanut II home, the clone took on the same caregiving role as her predecessor. As soon as she could reach his foot pedals and clamber up his legs, she started spending most of her time in his wheelchair, not wanting to let him out of her sight. “It’s like having the same dog,” he told me. “It’s unreal.” One possible explanation for this perceived similarity, Rodriguez told me, is “cellular memory,” a theory that memories from the brain can actually be stored at a cellular level, and that those memories are heritable. But it’s also likely that genetically identical animals who are raised by the same owner, in the same environment, could end up displaying familiar behaviors—or at least that owners would interpret their behaviors as similar. Pets are, after all, the perfect object for this kind of projection: They can’t challenge their owners’ assumptions about who they are, what they remember, or how connected they feel to their two-legged family. However familiar a clone might seem, though, a pet owner’s initial loss isn’t so neatly resolved. Mendola told me he feels that Princess Ariel and Princess Jasmine are like the original Princess “in a new shell.” But still, he misses Princess terribly. Since she died, he hasn’t been able to sleep in the bed he shared with her; he, Ariel, and Jasmine use a different room. Westmoreland does feel like he has his treasured Peanut—or “P1” as he now refers to her—back in the form of Peanut II. But he also has two new dachshunds, Cleo and Zoe; he adopted them right after Peanut died, but they were nothing like her and, he felt, didn’t fill the void she’d left. I asked Westmoreland if it was possible that he might have bonded with Cleo and Zoe more had he not been so focused on re-creating a specific relationship with Peanut II. Perhaps, he told me, he would have connected especially with Cleo, hoping she could eventually turn into a good service dog—but now he’ll never know, because he decided Peanut II was right for the position. In fact, Westmoreland is so pleased that he’d consider getting a Peanut III. But if he keeps replacing Peanut with clones, I wonder whether he might be postponing his grief, rather than coping with it. For some pet owners, having the option of that postponement—of going around their loss, rather than through it—is a comfort in itself, even if they never actually buy a clone. Rodriguez told me that the bulk of ViaGen’s customers have a genetic-preservation sample stored in the freezer (for a fee of $1,600) but haven’t gone through with cloning yet, and may choose never to do so. Rodriguez even has cells from two of her deceased dogs preserved in case she decides to clone them in the future. And the company has cloned animals from cells that were nearly 20 years old—so owners might keep the possibility in the back of their mind for a long, long time. When I met Mendola, he showed me a video from the day he received Ariel and Jasmine. He’s sitting at a restaurant in LaGuardia Airport—visibly nervous, his hands clasped in prayer—anticipating the arrival of Princess’s clones. They’re brought to him in a carrying case, and as he’s handed the two tiny wriggling puppies, he holds them close while they start burrowing their faces into his chest; he beams down at them, sniffling tears of joy. Mendola remembers asking them, “Do you remember me?” He interpreted their kisses and wagging tails to mean they did. © 2023 The Atlantic Media Co., as first published in The Atlantic. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

I helgen anordnades Monaco Yacht Show, där världens värstingbåtar köps och säljs. Det sammanlagda värdet av båtarna här uppgås gå till motsvarande över 45 miljarder kronor, skriver The Washington Post. Men även om man hade kunnat tänka sig att försäljningen av lyxjakter påverkats negativt av en global inflation, klimatkris och krig i Europa, är så inte fallet. Inte heller sanktioner mot ryska oligarker, som traditionellt sett varit stora köpare, har rubbat industrin. Det största problemet för lyxbåtsmarknaden idag är snarare att utbudet inte räcker till för att möta den höga efterfrågan. (Svensk översättning av Omni). Sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs don’t seem to have hurt the big-flashy-boat industry By William Booth September 30, 2023 MONTE CARLO - Welcome aboard at the Monaco Yacht Show, where the world's superyachts are bought and sold. Warning: If you find the excesses of the 0.01 percent triggering, avert your eyes. The scene here is like a parking lot crammed with water toys that cost a cool collective $4.3 billion. The technical term for the size of these pleasure craft is "enormous." The top class - the megayachts - are now 100 meters in length - that's 328 feet, more than a football field from goal line to goal line. There are dozens of these boats on order. There's also talk of gigayachts to come. Asked what a giga might be, a top broker joked: "That would be a repurposed aircraft carrier." Have one helipad? Sad. Why not have two? Jet Skis? The new must-have toy is a submersible. There are onboard elevators, naturally, to get between the four, five and six decks. Surfaces are clad in lost forests of teak and mahogany with gleaming stainless steel accents. The deckhands are constantly polishing, rubbing, squeegeeing. You might think superyacht sales would be super down, what with global inflation, a real estate bust in China, threats of recession, trench warfare in Europe and - dare we say it here? - a planetary climate crisis. Surprise. You would be wrong. Russian oligarchs have traditionally been big buyers of showy yachts, accounting for an estimated 10 percent of sales. Sanctions and the U.S. Justice Department's Task Force KleptoCapture have taken a bite. A lot of the Russian boats - including the $700 million megayacht Scheherazade, allegedly owned by Vladimir Putin himself - have been seized. But the world is bigger than Russia - and there are more billionaires than ever. "The sanctions didn't affect the industry as much as you might think," said Bob Denison, a top American broker with new offices in Monaco. He said the orders for "new builds" in European shipyards that were canceled because the buyers were placed on sanction lists were quickly snapped up by others who weren't. The problem with the superyacht market today? "There's not enough superyachts," said Jeremy Roche, one of Denison's directors. It costs 600 euros ($635) for a day pass to the Monaco Yacht Show. Many well-heeled lookie-loos have come this week to stroll along the blue-carpeted docks and bump into a champagne tent. And by well-heeled, we mean it. You must take off your shoes to board boats at the show - even if you are the prince of Monaco. So high-end footwear is strewn in front of the gangways, the ubiquitous Gucci loafers jumbled together with sneakers from Dior and Balenciaga that will set you back about $1,000 a pair. The number of real buyers - the whales - is harder to calculate. A sales rep estimated there might be one buyer for every 1oo staff - that's exhibitors, brokers, deckhands, hostesses, marketers, cleaners, security. We got an invite from a friendly publicist to take a tour of Phoenix 2, built by Lürssen shipyard in northern Germany. She's 90 meters, or 295 feet, with room for 14 guests in seven cabins, attended by a crew of 28 - and on sale for $132 million. The boat was designed for the "richest man in Poland," the late Jan Kulczyk, who wanted the interior to resemble an art deco Manhattan penthouse. There's an Empire State Building vibe, with a lot of black and white - plus a bourbon bar, lap pool, steam sauna, screening room, gym, wine cave, Steinway piano and duplex owners' cabin. Henry Smith, a partner at Cecil Wright brokerage, was showing the boat and happy to discuss the evolving market for superyachts - generally, boats more than 24 meters. Three decades ago, a 40-meter yacht would have been gigantic, he said. Today, those are considered midsize. Of the roughly 1,200 superyachts on order in boatyards, about two dozen are more than 100 meters. "Boats just get bigger and bigger, with prices going up and up," he said. "The future looks bright." The pace of sales is down a bit from the records of the pandemic years, when the ultrarich sought out superyachts as safe havens. But Smith said this year is still good. He and his brokerage recently oversaw the sale of superyacht Kismet, originally built for Pakistani American billionaire Shahid Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars. The boat was on the market for just three months and sold for 149 million euros ($157 million). The buyers keep coming, but they are changing, the brokers say. Traditionally they have been multimillionaires - 99 percent male - who sell their businesses in their mid 60s and want some high-end downtime with family and friends. The trend now is younger, with younger families, who struck it rich, or as Smith called it, experienced "a big liquidity event." He said, "I took on a chap who made several billion very quickly," who wasn't sure exactly what he wanted, except that he really wanted . . . something big. At the boat show, we learned that sometimes it's impossible to accommodate everything you need on your superyacht. Tenders - used to ferry owners and guests from ship to shore - have a low profile and can be stored aboard in what the yachting community calls "the garage." Robert Oakley of Falcon Tenders will sell you Miss Wonderly for $2.19 million. It's powered by a hybrid diesel-electric engine, which gives you one hour on electric in port. "Think limousine," he said. But where do you put the sub? Ian Sheard, the engineering director of Seamagine, maker of private submarines, explained it to us. "You got the big white boat, the superyacht, right?" Sheard said. "Then you need the toy hauler." Say again? "The 'shadow ship' that follows the superyacht that has all the stuff you can't fit on the superyacht." His submarines cost $4 million to $7 million and can carry two to seven passengers, with over 12,000 drama-free dives so far. On our tours of superyachts, the guides often spoke of the boats' "understated glamour." But the glamour seemed bluntly stated, which was kind of the point? Some interiors had a look and feel of a neutral-color Four Seasons. Others brought to mind a Vegas suite for a high-roller. Aboard the $110-million Kensho, the publicist said that the owner (Udo Müller, chief executive of Ströer Media), wanted "a villa at sea." She described it as "more Zen, more calm." The kind of calm that three onboard bars might provide. An older, smaller superyacht can be had for as little as $10 million - the price of an upscale home in Los Angeles or London. But if you are not ready to buy, many of the boats are used by their owners for only a few weeks in the high season and are otherwise available for charter. To rent the Phoenix 2 costs a base price of $1.22 million a week. That doesn't include fuel, food, drink, taxes, mooring and dock fees or tips - so call it $1.6 million. We had to ask a couple of times about the bill and were told to keep adding zeros. It's the fuel that gets you. A 50-meter yacht making a fast run between Monaco and St. Tropez might burn through $35,000 of diesel. And even if you don't go anywhere, a mooring ball or a slip at a primo port can cost thousands of dollars a night. There was some talk at the Monaco Yacht Show about sustainability - about new green fuels, more gentle anchoring - but it was a sideshow. Smith, the super broker, put it this way. "Green yachting is mostly a fallacy," he said, adding, "no illusion, these things pollute." Though you can mitigate the damage a bit. He suggested anyone chartering a superyacht for a week "go out and plant a lot of trees." © 2023 The Washington Post. Sign up for the Today's Worldview newsletter here.

Burop hördes när guvernören Ron DeSantis i dag besökte en vaka för de tre personer som sköts ihjäl i en butik i Jacksonville i Florida i lördags, skriver NPR. – Du är inte välkommen här, ropade en av de omkring 200 personer som samlats nära brottsplatsen, i ett område med huvudsakligen svarta invånare. DeSantis fick kliva tillbaka från mikrofonen och en lokalpolitiker uppmanade folksamlingen att lyssna på republikanens tal. Han fick senare spridda applåder när han kallade gärningsmannen för ”drägg”. Gärningsmannen i Jacksonville var en vit man i 20-årsåldern, offren var svarta och enligt polisen var dådet rasistiskt motiverat.

– Han hatade svarta människor, säger TK Waters vid sheriffmyndigheten i Jacksonville. En stund före klockan 14, lokal tid, öppnade gärningsmannen eld i butiken. Han var maskerad, iförd skyddsväst och beväpnad med en pistol samt ett halvautomatiskt gevär av typen AR-15 – som är vanligt vid masskjutningar. Föräldrarna ringde polisen Efter att ha skjutit ihjäl tre personer, två män och en kvinna, tog mannen sitt eget liv. Den misstänkte skytten beskrivs av polisen som en vit man i 20-årsåldern som bodde hemma hos sina föräldrar. Han hade innan dådet skickat ut ett manifest till polismyndigheter, media och till sina föräldrar, enligt Waters. Där ska mannens "avskyvärda hatiska ideologi" ha framgått tydligt. Föräldrarna fick ett sms från sonen klockan 13.18 om att de borde kolla datorn. De ringde polisen vid 13.53 – men då var det redan för sent och skjutandet hade börjat. Påmålat hakkors Gärningsmannen tros ha agerat ensam. – Det finns absolut ingenting som tyder på att skytten är del av en större grupp, säger TK Waters, som på pressträffen visade upp bilder på skjutvapnen, varav ett hade ett påmålat hakkors. Den federala polisen FBI har inlett en utredning om hatbrott.

Lördagens skjutning i den amerikanska delstaten Florida, där två män och en kvinna dog, var rasistiskt motiverad. Det uppgav sheriffen TK Waters på en pressträff i går kväll, lokal tid, skriver CNN. – Han (skytten) hatade svarta människor, sa Waters. Gärningsmannen, som uppges vara en vit man i 20-årsåldern, ska ha skjutit sig själv efter morden som skedde vid en matbutik i Jacksonville. Enligt Waters lämnade han efter sig tre manifest som beskriver hans ”äckliga hatideologi”. NBC News skriver att mannen hade två vapen på sig. Båda uppges ha varit märkta med svastikor.

▸ Tre personer sköts på lördagen ihjäl i en butik i Jacksonville i Florida i USA.

En man i 20-årsåldern sköt på lördagen ihjäl tre personer i en butik i Jacksonville i Florida i USA.

Flera personer har dödats i en skjutning i Jacksonville i den amerikanska delstaten Florida, rapporterar CNN. Skytten ska ha barrikaderat sig inne i en butik, enligt stadens borgmästare, men det är oklart om offren befann sig i lokalen eller utanför. – Det är oacceptabelt. En skjutning är en skjutning för mycket, men dessa masskjutningar är väldigt svåra att acceptera, säger borgmästaren Donna Deega.