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      Fossils Show Giant Predatory Sea Scorpions Were Distance Swimmers

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      Specimens of what appear to be the largest eurypterid species found in Australia could shed light on the sudden extinction of the massive arthropods.Most modern scorpions would fit in the palm of your hand. But in the oceans of the Paleozoic era more than 400 million years ago, animals known popularly as sea scorpions were apex predators that could grow larger than people in size.“They were effectively functioning as sharks,” said Russell Bicknell, a paleobiologist at the American Museum of Natural History.New research by Dr. Bicknell and colleagues, published Saturday in the journal Gondwana Research and relying on Australian fossils, reveals that the biggest sea scorpions were capable of crossing oceans, a finding that is “absolutely pushing the limits of what we know arthropods could do,” he said.What are commonly known as sea scorpions were a diverse group of arthropods called eurypterids. They came in many shapes and sizes but are perhaps best known for their largest representatives, which could grow to more than nine feet long. With huge claws, a beefy exoskeleton and a strong set of legs for swimming, the larger sea scorpions most likely ruled the seas.However fearsome these arthropods must have been to Paleozoic prey, they went extinct without much of a bang. The fossil record of eurypterids peaked in the Silurian period, which started about 444 million years ago, and they then abruptly died out after the early Devonian period ended about 393 million years ago.That sudden turn of fate has left scientists bewildered.“They appear, they start doing really well, they get very big, and then they go extinct,” said James Lamsdell, a paleobiologist at West Virginia University who was not involved in the study. “For a while they were so dominant, and then they just burned out.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      He Made a Game About a Joyous Journey. He Also Got a Bit Lost.

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      Anthony Tan was 16 when his idea for a video game about a deer caught the industry’s eye. Nine years later, he’s still working on it.Anthony Tan’s hands shook as he took his seat in a dark Los Angeles theater. The neon green lights sporadically illuminated the 7,000 faces around him.Tan, a solo video game developer, was just 20 years old. Yet a trailer for his game, Way to the Woods, was about to share screen time with dozens of other coming Xbox titles, including those from mega-franchises like Gears of War and Halo. Unlike those games, created by teams of hundreds with eight- or nine-figure budgets, Tan had built his alone in his spare time, buoyed by grant funding.By the time he sat down in the theater at Microsoft’s annual hype-building event, in June 2019, Tan had watched his trailer more than 100 times. He knew every note, every camera pan. As the lights dimmed and the screen faded to black, he was too nervous to look. Everyone else watched his game’s stars — a deer and a fawn — appear onscreen, pushing a railway handcar across a golden plain.Even before the event was over, Tan’s phone blew up with Twitter messages from strangers. Millions of people had been watching the livestream online. Some praised the game’s art style, which Tan said was inspired by the Studio Ghibli movies “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away”; others were intrigued by its unusual main characters.Tan was now shaking from adrenaline, not nerves.“It was absolutely exhilarating,” he said.Tan’s game about animals navigating an abandoned world had struck a chord. The final seconds of his stylish, mysterious trailer made a promise, or as close to one as the world of video game development allows: “Coming 2020 … for real this time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Julian Assange Pleads Guilty to Espionage, Securing His Freedom

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      The WikiLeaks founder, who entered the plea in a U.S. courtroom in Saipan in the Western Pacific, now plans to fly home to Australia.Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a felony charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act, securing his freedom under a plea deal that saw its final act play out in a remote U.S. courtroom in Saipan in the Western Pacific.He appeared in court wearing a black suit with his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, and Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the United States. He stood briefly and offered his plea more than a decade after he obtained and published classified secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010, moving a twisted case involving several countries and U.S. presidents closer to its conclusion. It was all part of an agreement allowing him to return to his native country, Australia, after spending more than five years in British custody — most of it fighting extradition to the United States.His family and lawyers documented his journey from London to Bangkok and on to Saipan, capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, posting photos and videos online from a chartered jet. His defense team said that in the negotiations over his plea deal, Mr. Assange had refused to appear in a court on the U.S. mainland, and that he had not been allowed to fly commercial.His wife, Stella, posted an urgent fund-raising appeal on the social media platform X, seeking help in covering the $520,000 cost of the flight, which she said would have to be repaid to the Australian government. She also wrote on X that watching a video of Mr. Assange entering the courtroom made her think of “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory deprivation and the four walls of his high-security Belmarsh prison cell.”In court, Mr. Assange responded carefully to questions from U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. He defended his actions, describing himself as a journalist seeking information from sources, a task he said he saw as legal and constitutionally protected. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Archie Moore, Australian Artist, Wins Top Prize at Venice Biennale

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      Moore, an Indigenous Australian artist, won the Golden Lion for “kith and kin,” which draws on what he says is 65,000 years of family history.Archie Moore, an Indigenous Australian artist who has created an installation including a monumental family tree, won the top prize at the Venice Biennale on Saturday.Moore, 54, took the Golden Lion, the prize for the best national participation at the Biennale, the world’s oldest and most high-profile international art exhibition. He beat out artists representing 85 other countries to become the first Australian winner.For his installation, “kith and kin,” Moore has drawn a family tree in chalk on the walls and ceiling of the Australia Pavilion. The web of names encompasses 3,484 people and Moore says it stretches back 65,000 years, although he has smudged some details so that they are hard to read. In the center of the room is a huge table covered with stacks of government documents relating to the deaths of Indigenous Australians in police custody.Julia Bryan-Wilson, the chair of this year’s Biennale jury and a professor of contemporary art at Columbia University, said during the prize announcement that Moore’s installation was “a mournful archive” that “stands out for its strong aesthetic, its lyricism and its invocation of shared loss for occluded pasts.”Before Saturday’s ceremony, which was streamed online, Moore’s pavilion had already been a critical hit. Julia Halperin, writing in The New York Times, said that the installation was one no Biennale visitor should miss. Moore’s hand-drawn family tree was so dense at points it was impossible to make out the names. “The implication is clear: expand the aperture wide enough and we are all related,” Halperin said. “It’s a concept that could feel trite if it weren’t rendered with such poetry, rigor and specificity.”A detail of Moore’s family tree in the pavilion.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Australia, a Validation of Sorts for Brittany Higgins

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      More than three years after Brittany Higgins went public with her claim of rape, her case reached a conclusion of sorts.When a young former government employee said on national television in 2021 that she had been sexually assaulted in Australia’s Parliament two years earlier, it shocked the nation and unleashed a wave of anger aimed at the country’s insular, male-dominated political establishment.The employee, Brittany Higgins accused her colleague Bruce Lehrmann of raping her when she was inebriated, and said that she felt pressure from the government at the time not to report the assault. She became a figurehead for a reckoning on women’s rights that ultimately contributed to the electoral ousting of Australia’s conservative national government. But for years, there was no legal conclusion to the case.On Monday, it was finally — somewhat — settled, in a roundabout way.Mr. Lehrmann lost a civil defamation suit that he had filed against the television station that first broadcast Ms. Higgins’ account, with the judge ruling that based on the available evidence, it was more likely than not that Mr. Lehrmann had raped her.The proceedings did not take place in a criminal court, and the offense did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, the standard of proof was a balance of probabilities — a legal term meaning whether something is more likely than not to have occurred.Still, for many, this was a long-awaited validation for Ms. Higgins.“Something resembling justice has been done,” said Sarah Maddison, a political science professor at the University of Melbourne.Justice Michael Lee of the Australian Federal Court in Sydney determined on Monday that it was more likely than not that Ms. Higgins had been inebriated, unaware of her surroundings, and lying still “like a log” while Mr. Lehrmann assaulted her. The judge found that Mr. Lehrmann had been “hellbent” on having sex with her, disregarding whether she had the capacity to consent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Witnesses to Sydney Mall Stabbing Describe Harrowing Scenes

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      Witnesses to the stabbings at a mall in a Sydney, Australia, on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.Some shoppers hid inside as alarms blared. Others ran out, screaming as they passed by bodies on the floor.When Gavin Lockhart, 37, saw people running as he sat inside a coffee shop at the mall, there was a moment of confusion. “Is it a celebrity?” he first thought. “Is it because of a gunman?”Then he fled when he heard, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!”He followed the coffee shop’s owner, Michael Dunkley, 57, who also brought his wife, who was cooking, and two baristas into a staffroom where they could lock the door. Mr. Dunkley said afterward that just one thought was in his mind when the screaming began: “I have to get my wife and staff to safety.”Mr. Dunkley left the room to try to chase down the attacker, whom he described as a thin man with a beard and short hair, wearing dark green pants and a green jersey.Then, Mr. Dunkley recounted, he saw a police officer attempt to stop the assailant. When the officer told the man to put his knife down, he lunged toward her with his weapon, the cafe owner said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mall Attack Was Australia’s Worst Mass Violence in Years

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      The stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping center that left at least six people dead on Saturday was Australia’s worst act of mass violence since 2017, when a driver killed six people by deliberately plowing his car into pedestrians in Melbourne.In a country where mass stabbings and shootings are rare — in part because of strict gun laws — the latest attack has horrified Australians.Here is how it compares to other acts of mass violence in the country in recent years:June 2019: A gunman killed four people in a shooting spree across the main business district of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.January 2017: A man with drug-induced psychosis drove his car into a busy shopping street in Melbourne’s central business district, killing six people and injuring more than 20 others.December 2014: A gunman held 18 people hostage in a cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The standoff with the police, which lasted 16 hours, ended with the deaths of two hostages and the gunman. The authorities later labeled it a terrorist attack.November 2011: Fourteen people died when a nurse set fire to a nursing home in Quakers Hill, near Sydney.April 1996: Australia’s worst mass shooting occurred at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a gunman killed 35 people. Just weeks later, the country’s leaders brought in strict gun laws. More

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      A Reporter With a Fear of Snakes Tags Along With a Snake Catcher

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      To write about the increase in snake encounters in Australia, a journalist had to get hands-on with the slithering reptiles.The carpet python in the car didn’t seem angry, but it was certainly curious.The snake, thankfully, was contained inside a navy blue canvas bag, its temporary enclosure until a snake catcher and I arrived at its release location. It lifted its body, exploring the space. I watched it push the fabric this way and that from inside the bag, as if performing a peculiar puppet show.It would have been funny, had I not felt slightly sick.When I pitched an article about snake catchers on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, where snake encounters are becoming increasingly common as the climate changes, I had somehow forgotten that reporting on snakes would require spending quite a bit of time with them.I spent part of my childhood in Singapore, where snakes were an infrequent, but still present, part of our lives. We once found a cobra snoozing behind a framed picture that was propped up against the wall. News of neighbors’ missing pets sometimes preceded sightings of suspiciously well-fed pythons. I still remember the anxiety that followed a sudden, stealthy swish of long grass. And then there’s a gruesome memory of an irate snake fighting one of our cats, Fudge. (Fudge made it out unscathed. I can’t say the same for the snake.)For a time, I steered clear of walking on grass and even dark-colored carpets.When I was about 12, my family relocated to New Zealand, which has no native land snakes. I mostly forgot about them. Recently, I was able to watch videos of snake catchers without flinching, and I wondered whether I had shaken my fear. But in February, while on vacation in Thailand, I came across a dead snake smeared across the asphalt. It felt like my heart had leaped into my mouth.A venomous red-bellied black snake being released in bush land on the Sunshine Coast.David Maurice Smith for The New York TimesI realized that if I were to avoid professional embarrassment to report my article, I needed the help of an expert. A few days before flying to the Sunshine Coast, a subtropical area in the Australian state of Queensland home to many snake species, I spoke to Shawn Goldberg, a psychologist in Melbourne who has worked with people who have phobias.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More