Word: localitis
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...Customers of German savings banks, which are public institutions run by local councils, have been hit the hardest. More than 20 million of these banks' cards were not working when the glitch cropped up on New Year's Day. About 2.5 million cards issued by private banks such as Commerzbank and Postbank were also affected...
...world-class artists, cutting-edge galleries and deep-pocketed collectors - of which juice tycoon Eugenio Lopez is the most important. Located at his family's sprawling Jumex juice factory just outside the capital, Lopez's Colección Jumex is a priceless assemblage of works by blue-chip local and international artists ranging from Gabriel Orozco to Andy Warhol. It is unequaled in Latin America...
What is killing the octopus of Vila Nova de Gaia? That question has obsessed the Portuguese city - located just across the Douro River from Porto - since Jan. 2, when 1,100 lb. (500 kg) of dead octopus were found on a 1.8-mile (3 km) stretch of local beach. The following day, another 110 lb. (50 kg) appeared; later there was just one expired creature. "It's very strange that so many should be killed, and in such a confined area," says Nuno Oliveira, director of the Gaia Biological Park, a nature refuge on the outskirts of Vila Nova...
...Twelve hundred pounds is a lot of dead cephalopod, especially when no one seems to know for sure what killed them. Local biologists have ruled out pollution or contamination because no other species were affected. And although some suggest that perhaps a boat, illegally fishing the multilegged creatures, threw them overboard in a panicked attempt to avoid detection, that possibility also seems unlikely. "The sea has been very rough," says Oliveira. "No one has been out fishing for days." (See pictures of 10 animal species nearing extinction...
...Until then, evidence points to some sort of disease: a parasite, bacteria or powerful virus. "It affected octopus of all ages and sizes," says Mike Weber, director of the Aguda coastal station, an aquarium and biological research institute in Gaia. "That suggests that it wiped out the entire local population." (See pictures of the politics of water in Asia...