Word: dolphins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Luna died smiling. The bottle-nosed dolphin was captured last December off the southwest coast of Baja California. For two hours, she traveled in a coffin-like trailer with virtually no water. When she arrived at her destination, an aquarium at La Concha Beach Resort in La Paz, Mexico, she was carried in a makeshift hammock and deposited on a sandy beach. She tried to bite her handlers, but her protest went unheeded. She was forced to frolic and swim with tourists in a pen. After five weeks, she died--from stomach inflammation and ulcers caused by stress, according...
...such standards are less likely to be followed in parks outside the U.S. In Cuba, the source for many of the dolphins that end up in Caribbean aquariums, a fisherman can earn more than a year's income by selling a wild dolphin on the black market for about $800. Once trained, that same dolphin can fetch $1,500 a day at a Caribbean park. Several cases have been reported of dolphins suffering from stress, chlorine toxicity or an overdose of human affection. "Dolphins don't just drop out of the sky and end up in tanks," says Gwen McKenna...
...opened fire in a Santee, Calif. school, killing two of his fellow students and wounding 13 others. Further afield, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon completed the appointments to his new cabinet, and 60 people died when a bridge collapsed in Portugal. Meanwhile, in Palm Beach County, Fl. a dolphin which had been rescued from a shark attack last year was returned to the sea after recovering from its injuries...
...these events, only the dolphin was covered on the 11 p.m. news in Palm Beach County. So, someone watching might well have had no idea at all that our vice president was in the hospital. Many may still not know of the tragedy in Portugal. Which is, of course, as it should be--the well-being of a dolphin is definitely of more importance than the health of the vice president or 60 Portuguese commuters. Of course, Monday's news was far from atypical. Local news always seems to predominate on American television. This lack of balance is both tedious...
There is an old saying about local news: "If it bleeds, it leads." The police officer in Jupiter was hospitalized on Monday night. So was Dick Cheney. So were 60 commuters in Portugal. The dolphin tale was heartwarming, but should it have prevented us from hearing about these other issues? Just like hundreds of others across the country, network executives in West Palm Beach had to make a choice. Were they correct in deciding that a police officer with a leg wound was really more newsworthy than a vice president with heart problems...